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ALARMS 
AND   DISCURSIONS 

By 
G.  K.  CHESTERTON 


NEW    YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1911 


Copyright,  1911,  bt 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 


Published  February,  1911 


P^^f53 


■a. 

PREFACE    |Hy|/|./J 

I  COULD  Wish  that  this  string  of  loose  papers, 
if  it  was  to  bear  some  such  name,  had  been  called 
after  the  conventional  version  of  the  Elizabethan 
stage-direction,  and  named  "  Alarums  and  Ex- 
cursions." If  I  were  constrained  to  put  my 
moral  philosophy  in  one  sentence,  I  could  not 
do  it  more  satisfactorily  (to  myself)  than  by 
saying  that  I  am  in  favour  of  alarums  and 
against  alarms.  It  is  vain  to  tell  me  that  these 
two  words  were  the  same  once  and  come  from 
a  common  derivation.  The  people  who  trust  to 
derivations  are  always  wrong :  for  they  ignore 
the  life  and  adventures  of  a  word,  and  all  that  it 
has  done  since  it  was  born.  People  of  that  sort 
would  say  that  every  man  who  lives  in  a  villa  is 
a  villain.  They  would  say  that  being  chivalrous 
is  the  same  as  being  horsey. 

The  explanation  is  very  simple;  it  is  that  in 
the  modem  world  authors  do  not  make  up  their 

V 

265825 


PREFACE 

own  titles.  In  numberless  cases  they  leave  the 
title  to  the  publisher,  as  they  leave  the  binding 
— that  far  more  serious  problem.  I  had  pur- 
posed to  call  this  book  "  Gargoyles  " ;  traces  of 
such  an  intention  can  still  be  detected  (I  fear) 
in  the  second  essay.  Some  time  ago  I  tried  to 
write  an  unobtrusive  sociological  essay  called 
"  What  Is  Wrong."  Somehow  or  other  it 
turned  into  a  tremendous  philippic  called 
"  What's  Wrong  with  the  World,"  with  a  photo- 
graph of  myself  outside ;  a  photograph  I  swear  I 
had  never  seen  before  and  am  far  from  anxious 
to  see  again.  Such  things  arise  from  the  dul- 
ness  and  languor  of  authors,  as  compared  with 
the  hope  and  romantic  ardour  of  publishers.  In 
this  case  the  publisher  provided  the  title :  and  if 
he  had  provided  the  book  too  I  dare  say  it 
would  have  been  much  more  entertaining. 


n 


CONTENTS 


The  Fading  Fikeworks 

1- 

^•*  '  On  Gakgoyles 

7 

v  The  Sukeendee  of  a  Cockney     • 

16 

//  The  Nightmare 

23 

1^  The  Telegeaph  Poles    . 

,       30 

A  Drama  of  Dolls 

.       38 

^  The  Man  and  His  Newspaper    . 

45 

The    Appetite    of    Earth    . 

54 

Simmons  and  the  Social  Tie 

.       6H 

Cheese 

.       70 

The  Red  Town'     .... 

76 

The  Furrows 

84 

1^  The  Philosophy  of  Sight-Seeing 

.       89 

A  Criminal  Head   .... 

,       98 

The  Wrath  of  the  Roses   . 

.     106 

w^Th'e  Gold  of  Glastonbury  . 

.     112 

The  Futurists         .... 

119 

Dukes 

128 

O*"  The  Glory  of  Grey      .        .        . 

138 

■rii 

CONTENTS 


*-^  The   Anaechist 

How  I  Found  the  Superman 
The    New    House    . 
The  Wings  of   Stone    . 
O  ^  The  Three  Kinds  of  Men   . 

The  Steward  of  the  Chiltern 

DREDS       

The  Field   of  Blood     . 

The  Strangeness  of  Luxury 

The  Triumph  of  the  Donkey 

The  Wheel      .... 

Five  Hundred  and  Fifty-Five 

Ethandune 

The  Flat  Freak 

The  Garden  of  the  Sea 

The   Sentimentalist 

The  White   Horses 

The   Long   Bow 

The  Modern  Scrooge    . 

The  High  Plains    . 

The  Chorus 

A  Romance  of  the  Marshes 


HuN- 


viii 


THE    FADING    FIREWORKS 

In  the  frosty  grey  of  winter  twilight  there  comes 
a  crackle  and  spurt  of  bluish  fire ;  it  is  waved  for 
an  instant  in  a  sort  of  weak  excitement,  and  then 
fizzles  out  into  darkness :  and  by  the  blue  flash 
I  can  just  see  some  little  boys  lurching  by  with 
a  limp  bolster  and  a  loose  flapping  mask.  They 
attempt  to  light  another  firework,  but  it  emits 
only  a  kind  of  crackle ;  and  then  they  fade  away 
in  the  dark;  while  all  around  the  frosted  trees 
stand  up  indiff^erent  and  like  candelabras  of  iron. 
It  is  the  last  Guy ;  perhaps  the  last  in  all  Eng- 
land; for  the  custom  has  been  dwindling  to 
nothing  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  It  is  as  sad 
as  the  last  oracle.  For  with  it  passes  the  great 
positive  Protestant  faith  which  was  for  three 
centuries  a  real  religion  of  the  English.  The 
burning  of  that  image  has  been  as  central  and 
popular  as  the  jubilee  procession,  as  serious  as 
the  Funeral  of  the  King.  Guido  of  Vaux  has 
1 


THE   FADING   FIREWORKS 

taken  three  hundred  years  to  burn  to  ashes ;  for 
much  of  the  time  the  flare  of  him  lit  up  the  whole 
vault  of  heaven,  and  good  men  as  well  as  bad, 
saints  as  well  as  statesmen,  warmed  their  hands 
at  that  gigantic  fire.  But  now  the  last  gleam 
of  red  dies  in  the  grey  ashes :  and  leaves  English 
men  in  that  ancient  twilight  of  agnosticism, 
which  is  so  natural  to  men — and  so  depressing  to 
them.  The  echo  of  the  last  oracle  still  lingers 
in  my  ears.  For  though  I  am  neither  a  Prot- 
estant nor  a  Pagan,  I  cannot  see  without  sad- 
ness the  flame  of  vesta  extinguished,  nor  the  fires 
of  the  Fifth  of  November:  I  cannot  but  be 
touched  a  little  to  see  Paganism  merely  a  cold 
altar  and  Protestantism  only  a  damp  squib. 

The  old  Protestant  English  who  sustained  this 
strange  festival  for  three  centuries,  were  at  least 
so  far  Christian  that  they  tended  to  be  Friv- 
olous. They  were  still  sufficiently  at  one  with  the 
old  religious  life  of  Europe  to  exhibit  one  of  its 
most  notable  peculiarities;  the  slow  extraction 
of  pleasurable  associations  from  terrible  or  even 
painful  dates  and  names.     Nothing  so  stamps 


THE   FADING   FIREWORKS 

the  soul  of  Christendom  as  the  strange  sub- 
conscious gaiety  which  can  make  farces  out  of 
tragedies,  which  can  turn  instruments  of  torture 
into  toys.  So  in  the  Catholic  dramas  the  Devil 
was  always  the  comic  character ;  so  in  the  great 
Protestant  drama  of  Punch  and  Judy,  the  gal- 
lows and  the  coffin  are  the  last  and  best  of  the 
jokes.  So  it  is  also  with  even  the  nobler  solem- 
nities. St.  Valentine  was  a  priest  and  denied 
himself  the  love  of  women ;  but  his  feast  has  been 
turned  into  a  day  for  love-making.  In  certain 
indifferent  lands  and  epochs  this  has  doubtless 
gone  too  far;  there  are  too  many  people  who 
connect  Good  Friday  only  with  hot  cross  buns ; 
there  are  many  who  at  Michaelmas  think  only  of 
the  wings  of  a  goose,  and  never  of  the  wings  of 
an  Archangel.  But  broadly  speaking,  this 
tendency  is  a  real  tribute  to  the  healthful  and 
invigorating  quality  in  the  Christian  faith.  For 
if  the  tender  mercies  of  the  wicked  are  cruel, 
even  the  terrors  of  the  good  can  grow  kindly. 
And  there  is  certainly  no  stronger  instance  of 
the  thing   than   this   quaint  English  survival; 


THE   FADING   FIREWORKS 

which  has  interpreted  the  most  hideous  of  deaths 
in  terms  of  a  hilarious  half-holiday;  and  has 
changed  the  fires  of  Smithfield  into  fireworks. 

Quaintly  enough,  among  the  fireworks  that 
light  up  this  Protestant  festival,  there  are  some 
that  have  almost  papistical  names;  but  they 
also  bear  witness  to  the  mystical  levity  which 
turns  gibbets  and  faggots  into  playthings. 
When  little  boys  dance  with  delight  at  the  radi- 
ant rotation  of  a  Catherine  wheel,  they  seldom 
(I  imagine)  suppose  themselves  to  be  looking  at 
the  frightful  torments  of  a  virgin  martyr  cele- 
brated in  Catholic  art;  yet  this  must  surely  be 
the  origin  of  the  title.  We  might  imagine  a 
symbolic  pageant  of  the  faiths  and  philosophies 
of  mankind  carried  in  this  vivid  art  or  science  of 
coloured  fires;  in  such  a  procession  Confucian- 
ism, I  suppose,  would  be  typified  by  Chinese 
crackers ;  but  surely  there  would  be  little  doubt 
of  the  significance  of  Roman  candles.  They  are 
at  least  somewhat  singular  things  to  brandish 
when  one  is  renouncing  the  Pope  and  all  his 
works;  unless  we  do  it  on  the  principle  of  the 
4 


THE   FADING   FIREWORKS 

man  who  expressed  his  horror  of  cigars  by  burn- 
ing them  one  at  a  time. 

And,  indeed,  speaking  of  Confucianism,  I  have 
heard  it  said  that  the  whole  art  of  fireworks 
came  first  from  the  land  of  Confucius.  There 
is  something  not  inappropriate  in  such  an 
origin.  The  art  of  coloured  glass  can  truly  be 
called  the  most  typically  Christian  of  all  arts 
or  artifices.  The  art  of  coloured  lights  is  as 
essentially  Confucian  as  the  art  of  coloured  win- 
dows is  Christian,  ^sthetically,  they  produce 
somewhat  the  same  impression  on  the  fancy ;  the 
impression  of  something  glowing  and  magical; 
something  at  once  mysterious  and  transparent. 
But  the  difference  between  their  substance  and 
structure  is  the  whole  difference  between  the 
great  western  faith  and  the  great  eastern  agnos- 
ticism. The  Christian  windows  are  solid  and 
human,  made  of  heavy  lead,  of  hearty  and  char- 
acteristic colours;  but  behind  them  is  the  light. 
The  colours  of  the  fireworks  are  as  festive  and  as 
varied ;  but  behind  them  is  the  darkness.  They 
themselves  are  their  only  illumination ;  even  as  in 
5 


THE   FADING   FIREWORKS 

that  stem  philosophy,  man  is  his  own  star.  The 
rockets  of  ruby  and  sapphire  fade  away  slowly 
upon  the  dome  of  hollo wness  and  darkness.  But 
the  kings  and  saints  in  the  old  Gothic  windows, 
dusky  and  opaque  in  this  hour  of  midnight,  still 
contain  all  their  power  of  full  flamboyance,  and 
await  the  rising  of  the  sun. 


6 


ON    GARGOYLES 

Alone  at  some  distance  from  the  wasting  walls 
of  a  disused  abbey  I  found  half  sunken  in  the 
grass  the  grey  and  goggle-eyed  visage  of  one  of 
those  graven  monsters  that  made  the  ornamental 
water-spouts  in  the  cathedrals  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  lay  there,  scoured  by  ancient  rains  or 
striped  by  recent  fungus,  but  still  looking  like 
the  head  of  some  huge  dragon  slain  by  a  primeval 
hero.  And  as  I  looked  at  it,  I  thought  of  the 
meaning  of  the  grotesque,  and  passed  into  some 
symbolic  reverie  of  the  three  great  stages  of  art. 


Once  upon  a  time  there  lived  upon  an  island  a 
merry  and  innocent  people,  mostly  shepherds  and 
tillers  of  the  earth.  They  were  republicans, 
like  all  primitive  and  simple  souls;  they  talked 
over  their  affairs  under  a  tree,  ^xid  the  nearest 
7 


ON   GARGOYLES 

approach  they  had  to  a  personal  ruler  was  a  sort 
of  priest  or  white  witch  who  said  their  prayers 
for  them.  They  worshipped  the  sun,  not  idol- 
atrously,  but  as  the  golden  crown  of  the  god 
whom  all  such  infants  see  almost  as  plainly  as 
the  sun. 

Now  this  priest  was  told  by  his  people  to 
build  a  great  tower,  pointing  to  the  sky  in  salu- 
tation of  the  Sun-god ;  and  he  pondered  long  and 
heavily  before  he  picked  his  materials.  For  he 
was  resolved  to  use  nothing  that  was  not  al- 
most as  clear  and  exquisite  as  sunshine  itself; 
he  would  use  nothing  that  was  not  washed 
as  white  as  the  rain  can  wash  the  heavens, 
nothing  that  did  not  sparkle  as  spotlessly 
as  that  crown  of  God.  He  would  have  noth- 
ing grotesque  or  obscure;  he  would  not  have 
even  anything  emphatic  or  even  anything 
mysterious.  He  would  have  all  the  arches  as 
light  as  laughter  and  as  candid  as  logic.  He 
built  the  temple  in  three  concentric  courts,  which 
were  cooler  and  more  exquisite  in  substance  each 
than  the  other.  For  the  outer  wall  was  a  hedge 
8 


ON   GARGOYLES 

of  white  lilies,  ranked  so  thick  that  a  green  stalk 
was  hardly  to  be  seen ;  and  the  wall  within  that 
was  of  crystal,  which  smashed  the  sun  into  a 
million  stars.  And  the  wall  within  that,  which 
was  the  tower  itself,  was  a  tower  of  pure  water, 
forced  up  in  an  everlasting  fountain;  and  upon 
the  very  tip  and  crest  of  that  foaming  spire  was 
one  big  and  blazing  diamond,  which  the  water 
tossed  up  eternally  and  caught  again  as  a  child 
catches  a  ball. 

"  Now,"   said  the   priest,   "  I   have   made   a 
tower  which  is  a  little  worthy  of  the  sun." 


II 

But  about  this  time  the  island  was  caught  in  a 
swarm  of  pirates ;  and  the  shepherds  had  to  turn 
themselves  into  rude  warriors  and  seamen;  and 
at  first  they  were  utterly  broken  down  in  blood 
and  shame ;  and  the  pirates  might  have  taken  the 
jewel  flung  up  for  ever  from  their  sacred  fount. 
And  then,  after  years  of  horror  and  humiliation, 
they  gained  a  little  and  began  to  conquer  be- 
9 


ON   GARGOYLES 

cause  they  did  not  mind  defeat.  And  the  pride 
of  the  pirates  went  sick  within  them  after  a  few 
unexpected  foils ;  and  at  last  the  invasion  rolled 
back  into  the  empty  seas  and  the  island  was  de- 
livered. And  for  some  reason  after  this  men  be- 
gan to  talk  quite  differently  about  the  temple 
and  the  sun.  Some,  indeed,  said,  "  You  must 
not  touch  the  temple ;  it  is  classical ;  it  is  per- 
fect, since  it  admits  no  imperfections."  But  the 
others  answered,  "  In  that  it  differs  from  the 
sun,  that  shines  on  the  evil  and  the  good  and  on 
mud  and  monsters  everywhere.  The  temple  is 
of  the  noon;  it  is  made  of  white  marble  clouds 
and  sapphire  sky.  But  the  sun  is  not  always 
of  the  noon.  The  sun  dies  daily;  every  night 
he  is  crucified  in  blood  and  fire." 

Now  the  priest  had  taught  and  fought 
through  all  the  war,  and  his  hair  had  grown 
white,  but  his  eyes  had  grown  young.  And  he 
said,  "  I  was  wrong  and  they  are  right.  The 
sun,  the  symbol  of  our  father,  gives  life  to  all 
those  earthly  things  that  are  full  of  ugliness  and 
energy.  All  the  exaggerations  are  right,  if  they 
10 


ON   GARGOYLES 

exaggerate  the  right  thing.  Let  us  point  to 
heaven  with  tusks  and  horns  and  fins  and  trunks 
and  tails  so  long  as  they  all  point  to  heaven. 
The  ugly  animals  praise  God  as  much  as  the 
beautiful.  The  frog's  eyes  stand  out  of  his 
head  because  he  is  staring  at  heaven.  The 
giraffe's  neck  is  long  because  he  is  stretching 
towards  heaven.  The  donkey  has  ears  to  hear 
— let  him  hear." 

And  under  the  new  inspiration  they  planned  a 
gorgeous  cathedral  in  the  Gothic  manner,  with 
all  the  animals  of  the  earth  crawling  over  it,  and 
all  the  possible  ugly  things  making  up  one  com- 
mon beauty,  because  they  all  appealed  to  the 
god.  The  columns  of  the  temple  were  carved 
like  the  necks  of  giraffes ;  the  dome  was  like  an 
ugly  tortoise;  and  the  highest  pinnacle  was  a 
monkey  standing  on  his  head  with  his  tail  point- 
ing at  the  sun.  And  yet  the  whole  was  beauti- 
ful, because  it  was  lifted  up  in  one  living  and 
religious  gesture  as  a  man  lifts  his  hands  in 
prayer. 


11 


ON   GARGOYLES 

III 

But  this  great  plan  was  never  properly  com- 
pleted. The  people  had  brought  up  on  great 
wagons  the  heavy  tortoise  roof  and  the  huge 
necks  of  stone,  and  all  the  thousand  and  one 
oddities  that  made  up  that  unity,  the  owls  and 
the  efts  and  the  crocodiles  and  the  kangaroos, 
which  hideous  by  themselves  might  have  been 
magnificent  if  reared  in  one  definite  proportion 
and  dedicated  to  the  sun.  For  this  was  Gothic, 
this  was  romantic,  this  was  Christian  art;  this 
was  the  whole  advance  of  Shakespeare  upon 
Sophocles.  And  that  symbol  which  was  to 
crown  it  all,  the  ape  upside  down,  was  really 
Christian ;  for  man  is  the  ape  upside  down. 

But  the  rich,  who  had  grown  riotous  in  the 
long  peace,  obstructed  the  thing,  and  in  some 
squabble  a  stone  struck  the  priest  on  the  head 
and  he  lost  his  memory.  He  saw  piled  in  front 
of  him  frogs  and  elephants,  monkeys  and 
giraffes,  toadstools  and  sharks,  all  the  ugly 
things  of  the  universe  which  he  had  collected  to 
12 


ON   GARGOYLES 

do  honour  to  God.  But  he  forgot  why  he  had 
collected  them.  He  could  not  remember  the  de- 
sign or  the  object.  He  piled  them  all  wildly 
into  one  heap  fifty  feet  high;  and  when  he  had 
done  it  all  the  rich  and  influential  went  into  a 
passion  of  applause  and  cried,  "  This  is  real  art ! 
This  is  Realism!  This  is  things  as  they  really 
are!" 

That,  I  fancy,  is  the  only  true  origin  of 
Realism.  Realism  is  simply  Romanticism  that 
has  lost  its  reason.  This  is  so  not  merely  in  the 
sense  of  insanity  but  of  suicide.  It  has  lost  its 
reason ;  that  is  its  reason  for  existing.  The  old 
Greeks  summoned  godlike  things  to  worship 
their  god.  The  mediaeval  Christians  summoned 
all  things  to  worship  theirs,  dwarfs  and  pelicans, 
monkeys  and  madmen.  The  modem  realists 
summon  all  these  million  creatures  to  worship 
their  god;  and  then  have  no  god  for  them  to 
worship.  Paganism  was  in  art  a  pure  beauty ; 
that  was  the  dawn.  Christianity  was  a  beauty 
created  by  controlling  a  million  monsters  of  ugli- 
13 


ON   GARGOYLES 

ness ;  and  that  in  mj  belief  was  the  zenith  and 
the  noon.  Modem  art  and  science  practically 
mean  having  the  million  monsters  and  being  un- 
able to  control  them ;  and  I  will  venture  to  call 
that  the  disruption  and  the  decay.  The  finest 
lengths  of  the  Elgin  marbles  consist  of  splendid 
horses  going  to  the  temple  of  a  virgin.  Chris- 
tianity, with  its  gargoyles  and  grotesques,  really 
amounted  to  saying  this :  that  a  donkey  could  go 
before  all  the  horses  of  the  world  when  it  was 
really  going  to  the  temple.  Romance  means  a 
holy  donkey  going  to  the  temple.  Realism 
means  a  lost  donkey  going  nowhere. 

The  fragments  of  futile  journalism  or  fleeting 
impression  which  are  here  collected  are  very  like 
the  wrecks  and  riven  blocks  that  were  piled  in  a 
heap  round  my  imaginary  priest  of  the  sun. 
They  are  very  like  that  grey  and  gaping  head 
of  stone  that  I  found  overgrown  with  the  grass. 
Yet  I  will  venture  to  make  even  of  these  trivial 
fragments  the  high  boast  that  I  am  a  mediaevalist 
and  not  a  modern.  That  is,  I  really  have  a  no- 
tion of  why  I  have  collected  all  the  nonsensical 
14 


ON   GARGOYLES 

things  there  are.  I  have  not  the  patience  nor 
perhaps  the  constructive  intelligence  to  state  the 
connecting  link  between  all  these  chaotic  papers. 
But  it  could  be  stated.  This  row  of  shapeless 
and  ungainly  monsters  which  I  now  set  before 
the  reader  does  not  consist  of  separate  idols  cut 
out  capriciously  in  lonely  valleys  or  various 
islands.  These  monsters  are  meant  for  the  gar- 
goyles of  a  definite  cathedral.  I  have  to  carve 
the  gargoyles,  because  I  can  carve  nothing  else ; 
I  leave  to  others  the  angels  and  the  arches  and 
the  spires.  But  I  am  very  sure  of  the  style  of 
the  architecture  and  of  the  consecration  of  the 
church. 


16 


THE    SURRENDER    OF    A    COCKNEY 

Every  man,  though  he  were  born  in  the  very 
belfry  of  Bow  and  spent  his  infancy  climbing 
among  chimneys,  has  waiting  for  him  somewhere 
a  country  house  which  he  has  never  seen;  but 
which  was  built  for  him  in  the  very  shape  of  his 
soul.  It  stands  patiently  waiting  to  be  found, 
knee-deep  in  orchards  of  Kent  or  mirrored  in 
pools  of  Lincoln;  and  when  the  man  sees  it  he 
remembers  it,  though  he  has  never  seen  it  before. 
Even  I  have  been  forced  to  confess  this  at  last, 
who  am  a  Cockney,  if  ever  there  was  one,  a  Cock- 
ney not  only  on  principle,  but  with  savage  pride. 
I  have  always  maintained,  quite  seriously,  that 
the  Lord  is  not  in  the  wind  or  thunder  of  the 
waste,  but  if  anywhere  in  the  still  small  voice  of 
Fleet  Street.  I  sincerely  maintain  that  Nature- 
worship  is  more  morally  dangerous  than  the 
most  vulgar  man-worship  of  the  cities;  since  it 
can  easily  be  perverted  into  the  worship  of  an 
16 


SURRENDER   OF   A   COCKNEY 

impersonal  mystery,  carelessness,  or  cruelty. 
Thoreau  would  have  been  a  jollier  fellow  if  he 
had  devoted  himself  to  a  green-grocer  instead 
of  to  greens.  Swinburne  would  have  been  a  bet- 
ter moralist  if  he  had  worshipped  a  fishmonger 
instead  of  worshipping  the  sea.  I  prefer  the 
philosophy  of  bricks  and  mortar  to  the  philoso- 
phy of  turnips.  To  call  a  man  a  turnip  may 
be  playful,  but  is  seldom  respectful.  But  when 
we  wish  to  pay  emphatic  honour  to  a  man,  to 
praise  the  firmness  of  his  nature,  the  squareness 
of  his  conduct,  the  strong  humility  with  which  he 
is  interlocked  with  his  equals  in  silent  mutual 
support,  then  we  invoke  the  nobler  Cockney 
metaphor,  and  call  him  a  brick. 

But,  despite  all  these  theories,  I  have  sur- 
rendered ;  I  have  struck  my  colours  at  sight ;  at 
a  mere  glimpse  through  the  opening  of  a  hedge. 
I  shall  come  down  to  living  in  the  country,  like 
any  common  Socialist  or  Simple  Lifer.  I  shall 
end  my  days  in  a  village,  in  the  character  of  the 
Village  Idiot,  and  be  a  spectacle  and  a  judg- 
ment to  mankind.  I  have  already  learnt  the 
17 


SURRENDER   OF   A   COCKNEY 

rustic  manner  of  leaning  upon  a  gate ;  and  I  was 
thus  gymnastically  occupied  at  the  moment  when 
my  eye  caught  the  house  that  was  made  for  me. 
It  stood  well  back  from  the  road,  and  was  built 
of  a  good  yellow  brick;  it  was  narrow  for  its 
height,  like  the  tower  of  some  Border  rob- 
ber; and  over  the  front  door  was  carved  in 
large  letters,  "1908."  That  last  burst  of 
sincerity,  that  superb  scorn  of  antiquarian 
sentiment,  overwhelmed  me  finally.  I  closed 
my  eyes  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy.  My  friend 
(who  was  helping  me  to  lean  on  the  gate) 
asked  me  with  some  curiosity  what  I  was 
doing. 

"  My  dear  fellow,"  I  said,  with  emotion,  "  I 
am  bidding  farewell  to  forty-three  hansom  cab- 
men." 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  I  suppose  they  would  think 
this  county  rather  outside  the  radius." 

"  Oh,  my   friend,"   I  cried  brokenly,   "  how 
beautiful  London  is!     Why  do  they  only  write 
poetry  about  the  country?     I  could  turn  every 
lyric  cry  into  Cockney. 
18 


SURRENDER   OF   A   COCKNEY 

*  My  heart  leaps  up  when  I  behold 
A  sky-sign  in  the  sky,' 

as  I  observed  in  a  volume  which  is  too  little  read, 
founded  on  the  older  English  poets.  You  never 
saw  my  *  Golden  Treasury  Regilded ;  or,  The 
Classics  Made  Cockney  ' — ^it  contained  some  fine 
lines. 

*  O  Wild  West  End,  thou  breath  of  London's  being,' 

or  the  reminiscence  of  Keats,  beginning 

*  City  of  smuts  and  mellow  fogfulness.' 

I  have  written  many  such  lines  on  the  beauty  of 
London;  yet  I  never  realised  that  London  was 
really  beautiful  till  now.  Do  you  ask  me  why? 
It  is  because  I  have  left  it  for  ever." 

"  If  you  will  take  my  advice,"  said  my  friend, 
"  you  will  humbly  endeavour  not  to  be  a  fool. 
What  is  the  sense  of  this  mad  modem  notion  that 
every  literary  man  must  live  in  the  country,  with 
the  pigs  and  the  donkeys  and  the  squires? 
Chaucer  and  Spenser  and  Milton  and  Dryden 
lived  in  London;  Shakespeare  and  Dr.  Johnson 
came  to  London  because  they  had  had  quite 
19 


SURRENDER   OF   A   COCKNEY 

enough  of  the  country.  And  as  for  trumpery 
topical  j  oumalists  like  you,  why,  they  would  cut 
their  throats  in  the  country.  You  have  con- 
fessed it  yourself  in  your  own  last  words.  You 
hunger  and  thirst  after  the  streets;  you  think 
London  the  finest  place  on  the  planet.  And  if 
by  some  miracle  a  Bayswater  omnibus  could 
come  down  this  green  country  lane  you  would 
utter  a  yell  of  joy." 

Then  a  light  burst  upon  my  brain,  and  I 
turned  upon  him  with  terrible  sternness. 

"  Why,  miserable  aesthete,"  I  said  in  a  voice  of 
thunder,  "  that  is  the  true  country  spirit !  That 
is  how  the  real  rustic  feels.  The  real  rustic  does 
utter  a  yell  of  joy  at  the  sight  of  a  Bayswater 
omnibus.  The  real  rustic  does  think  London  the 
finest  place  on  the  planet.  In  the  few  moments 
that  I  have  stood  by  this  stile,  I  have  grown 
rooted  here  like  an  ancient  tree ;  I  have  been  here 
for  ages.  Petulant  Suburban,  I  am  the  real 
rustic.  I  believe  that  the  streets  of  London  are 
paved  with  gold;  and  I  mean  to  see  it  before  I 
die." 

20 


SURRENDER   OF   A   COCKNEY 

The  evening  breeze  freshened  among  the  little 
tossing  trees  of  that  lane,  and  the  purple  evening 
clouds  piled  up  and  darkened  behind  my  Country 
Seat,  the  house  that  belonged  to  me,  making,  by 
contrast,  its  yellow  bricks  gleam  like  gold.  At 
last  my  friend  said :  "  To  cut  it  short,  then,  you 
mean  that  you  will  live  in  the  country  because 
you  won't  like  it.  What  on  earth  will  you  do 
here ;  dig  up  the  garden.'^  " 

"  Dig ! "  I  answered,  in  honourable  scorn. 
"  Dig !  Do  work  at  my  Country  Seat ;  no, 
thank  you.  When  I  find  a  Country  Seat,  I  sit 
in  it.  And  for  your  other  objection,  you  were 
quite  wrong.  I  do  not  dislike  the  country,  but 
I  like  the  town  more.  Therefore  the  art  of 
happiness  certainly  suggests  that  I  should  live  in 
the  country  and  think  about  the  town.  Modem 
nature-worship  is  all  upside  down.  Trees  and 
fields  ought  to  be  the  ordinary  things;  terraces 
and  temples  ought  to  be  extraordinary.  I  am 
on  the  side  of  the  man  who  lives  in  the  country 
and  wants  to  go  to  London.  I  abominate  and 
abjure  the  man  who  lives  in  London  and  wants 
21 


SURRENDER   OF   A    COCKNEY 

to  go  to  the  country ;  I  do  it  with  all  the  more 
heartiness  because  I  am  that  sort  of  man  myself. 
We  must  learn  to  love  London  again,  as  rustics 
love  it.  Therefore  (I  quote  again  from  the 
great  Cockney  version  of  The  Golden  Treas- 
ury)— 

'Therefore,  ye  gas-pipes,  ye  asbestos  stoves, 
Forbode  not  any  severing  of  our  loves. 
I  have  relinquished  but  your  earthly  sight, 
To  hold  you  dear  in  a  more  distant  way. 
I'll  love  the  'buses  lumbering  through  the  wet. 
Even  more  than  when  I  lightly  tripped  as  they. 
The  grimy  colour  of  the  London  clay 
Is  lovely  yet,' 

because  I  have  found  the  house  where  I  was 
really  born ;  the  tall  and  quiet  house  from  which 
I  can  see  London  afar  ojff,  as  the  miracle  of  man 
that  it  is." 


THE    NIGHTMARE 

A  SUNSET  of  copper  and  gold  had  just  broken 
down  and  gone  to  pieces  in  the  west,  and  grey 
colours  were  crawling  over  everything  in  earth 
and  heaven;  also  a  wind  was  growing,  a  wind 
that  laid  a  cold  finger  upon  flesh  and  spirit. 
The  bushes  at  the  back  of  my  garden  began  to 
whisper  like  conspirators ;  and  then  to  wave  like 
wild  hands  in  signal.  I  was  trying  to  read  by 
the  last  light  that  died  on  the  lawn  a  long  poem 
of  the  decadent  period,  a  poem  about  the  old 
gods  of  Babylon  and  Egypt,  about  their  blazing 
and  obscene  temples,  their^  cruel  and  colossal 
faces. 

"  Or  didst  thou  love  the  God  of  Flies  who  plagued  the 
Hebrews  and  was  splashed 
With   wine  unto  the  waist,   or  Pasht   who  had  green 
beryls  for  her  eyes  ?  " 

I  read  this  poem  because  I  had  to  review  it  for 

\he  Daily  News;  still  it  was  genuine  poetry  of 

23 


THE   NIGHTMARE 

its  kind.  It  really  gave  out  an  atmosphere,  a 
fragrant  and  suffocating  smoke  that  seemed 
really  to  come  from  the  Bondage  of  Egypt  or 
the  Burden  of  Tyre.  There  is  not  much  in  com- 
mon (thank  God)  between  my  garden  with  the 
grey-green  English  sky-line  beyond  it,  and  these 
mad  visions  of  painted  palaces,  huge,  headless 
idols  and  monstrous  solitudes  of  red  or  golden 
sand.  Nevertheless  (as  I  confessed  to  myself) 
I  can  fancy  in  such  a  stormy  twilight  some  such 
smell  of  death  and  fear.  The  ruined  sunset 
really  looks  like  one  of  their  ruined  temples:  a 
shattered  heap  of  gold  and  green  marble.  A 
black  flapping  thing  detaches  itself  from  one  of 
the  sombre  trees  and  flutters  to  another.  I 
know  not  if  it  is  owl  or  flittermouse;  I  could 
fancy  it  was  a  black  cherub,  an  infernal  cherub 
of  darkness,  not  with  the  wings  of  a  bird  and 
the  head  of  a  baby,  but  with  the  head  of  a  gob- 
lin and  the  wings  of  a  bat.  I  think,  if  there 
were  light  enough,  I  could  sit  here  and  write 
some  very  creditable  creepy  tale,  about  how  I 
went  up  the  crooked  road  beyond  the  church 
Z4i 


THE   NIGHTMARE 

and  met  Something — say  a  dog,  a  dog  with  one 
eye.  Then  I  should  meet  a  horse,  perhaps,  a 
horse  without  a  rider ;  the  horse  also  would  have 
one  eye.  Then  the  inhuman  silence  would  be 
broken ;  I  should  meet  a  man  (need  I  say,  a  one- 
eyed  man?)  who  would  ask  me  the  way  to  my 
own  house.  Or  perhaps  tell  me  that  it  was 
burnt  to  the  ground.  I  think  I  could  tell  a 
very  cosy  little  tale  along  some  such  lines.  Or 
I  might  dream  of  climbing  for  ever  the  tall  dark 
trees  above  me.  They  are  so  tall  that  I  feel 
as  if  I  should  find  at  their  tops  the  nests  of  the 
angels ;  but  in  this  mood  they  would  be  dark  and 
dreadful  angels ;  angels  of  death. 

Only,  you  see,  this  mood  is  all  bosh.  I  do 
not  believe  in  it  in  the  least.  That  one-eyed  uni- 
verse, with  its  one-eyed  men  and  beasts,  was  only 
created  with  one  universal  wink.  At  the  top  of 
the  tragic  trees  I  should  not  find  the  Angel's 
Nest.  I  should  only  find  the  Mare's  Nest;  the 
dreamy  and  divine  nest  is  not  there.  In  the 
Mare's  Nest  I  shall  discover  that  dim,  enormous 
25 


THE   NIGHTMARE 

opalescent  egg  from  which  is  hatched  the  Night- 
mare. For  there  is  nothing  so  delightful  as  a 
nightmare — when  you  know  it  is  a  nightmare. 

That  is  the  essential.  That  is  the  stem  con- 
dition laid  upon  all  artists  touching  this  luxury 
of  fear.  The  terror  must  be  fundamentally  friv- 
olous. Sanity  may  play  with  insanity;  but  in- 
sanity must  not  be  allowed  to  play  with  sanity. 
Let  such  poets  as  the  one  I  was  reading  in  the 
garden,  by  all  means,  be  free  to  imagine  what 
outrageous  deities  and  violent  landscapes  they 
like.  By  all  means  let  them  wander  freely  amid 
their  opium  pinnacles  and  perspectives.  But 
these  huge  gods,  these  high  cities,  are  toys; 
they  must  never  for  an  instant  be  allowed  to  be 
anything  else.  Man,  a  gigantic  child,  must 
play  with  Babylon  and  Nineveh,  with  Isis  and 
with  Ashtaroth.  By  all  means  let  him  dream  of 
the  Bondage  of  Egypt,  so  long  as  he  is  free  from 
it.  By  all  means,  let  him  take  up  the  Burden  of 
Tyre,  so  long  as  he  can  take  it  lightly.  But 
the  old  gods  must  be  his  dolls,  not  his  idols. 
His    central    sanctities,    his    true    possessions, 


THE   NIGHTMARE 

should  be  Christian  and  simple.  And  just  as  a 
child  would  cherish  most  a  wooden  horse  or  a 
sword  that  is  a  mere  cross  of  wood,  so  man,  the 
great  child,  must  cherish  most  the  old  plain 
things  of  poetry  and  piety ;  that  horse  of  wood 
that  was  the  epic  end  of  Ilium,  or  that  cross  of 
wood  that  redeemed  and  conquered  the  world. 
•  •  •  ■  • 

In  one  of  Stevenson's  letters  there  is  a  charac- 
teristically humorous  remark  about  the  ap- 
palling impression  produced  on  him  in  childhood 
by  the  beasts  with  many  eyes  in  the  Book  of 
Revelations :  "  If  that  was  heaven,  what  in  the 
name  of  Davy  Jones  was  hell  like?  "  Now  in 
sober  truth  there  is  a  magnificent  idea  in  these 
monsters  of  the  Apocalypse.  It  is,  I  suppose, 
the  idea  that  beings  really  more  beautiful  or 
more  universal  than  we  are  might  appear  to  us 
frightful  and  even  confused.  Especially  they 
might  seem  to  have  senses  at  once  more  multiplex 
and  more  staring;  an  idea  very  imaginatively 
seized  in  the  multitude  of  eyes.  I  like  those 
monsters  beneath  the  throne  very  much.  But 
27 


THE   NIGHTMARE 

I  like  them  beneath  the  throne.  It  is  when  one 
of  them  goes  wandering  in  deserts  and  finds  a 
throne  for  himself  that  evil  faiths  begin,  and 
there  is  (literally)  the  devil  to  pay — to  pay  in 
dancing  girls  or  human  sacrifice.  As  long  as 
those  misshapen  elemental  powers  are  around  the 
throne,  remember  that  the  thing  that  they  wor- 
ship is  the  likeness  of  the  appearance  of  a  man. 
That  is,  I  fancy,  the  true  doctrine  on  the  sub- 
ject of  Tales  of  Terror  and  such  things,  which 
unless  a  man  of  letters  do  well  and  truly  be- 
lieve, without  doubt  he  will  end  by  blowing  his 
brains  out  or  by  writing  badly.  Man,  the  cen- 
tral pillar  of  the  world,  must  be  upright  and 
straight;  around  him  all  the  trees  and  beasts 
and  elements  and  devils  may  crook  and  curl  like 
smoke  if  they  choose.  All  really  imaginative 
literature  is  only  the  contrast  between  the  weird 
curves  of  Nature  and  the  straightness  of  the 
soul.  Man  may  behold  what  ugliness  he  likes  if 
he  is  sure  that  he  will  not  worship  it ;  but  there 
are  some  so  weak  that  they  will  worship  a  thing 
only  because  it  is  ugly.     These  must  be  chained 


THE   NIGHTMARE 

to  the  beautiful.  It  is  not  always  wrong  even  to 
go,  like  Dante,  to  the  brink  of  the  lowest  prom- 
ontory and  look  down  at  hell.  It  is  when  you 
look  up  at  hell  that  a  serious  miscalculation  has 
probably  been  made. 

#  •  •  •  • 

Therefore  I  see  no  wrong  in  riding  with  the 
Nightmare  to-night ;  she  whinnies  to  me  from  the 
rocking  tree-tops  and  the  roaring  wind;  I  will 
catch  her  and  ride  her  through  the  awful  air. 
Woods  and  weeds  are  alike  tugging  at  the  roots 
in  the  rising  tempest,  as  if  all  wished  to  fly  with 
us  over  the  moon,  like  that  wild  amorous  cow 
whose  child  was  the  Moon-Calf.  We  will  rise  to 
that  mad  infinite  where  there  is  neither  up  nor 
down,  the  high  topsy-turveydom  of  the  heavens. 
I  will  answer  the  call  of  chaos  and  old  night. 
I  will  ride  on  the  Nightmare ;  but  she  shall  not 
ride  on  me. 


29 


THE    TELEGRAPH    POLES 

My  friend  and  I  were  walking  in  one  of  those 
wastes  of  pine-wood  which  make  inland  seas  of 
solitude  in  every  part  of  Western  Europe ;  which 
have  the  true  terror  of  a  desert,  since  they  are 
uniform,  and  so  one  may  lose  one's  way  in  them. 
Stiff,  straight,  and  similar,  stood  up  all  around 
us  the  pines  of  the  wood,  like  the  pikes  of  a  silent 
mutiny.  There  is  a  truth  in  talking  of  the  vari- 
ety of  Nature;  but  I  think  that  Nature  often 
shows  her  chief  strangeness  in  her  sameness. 
There  is  a  weird  rhythm  in  this  very  repeti- 
tion; it  is  as  if  the  earth  were  resolved  to 
repeat  a  single  shape  until  the  shape  shall  turn 
terrible. 

Have  you  ever  tried  the  experiment  of  saying 
some  plain  word,  such  as  "  dog,"  thirty  times.? 
By  the  thirtieth  time  it  has  become  a  word  like 
"  snark "  or  "  pobble."  It  does  not  become 
tame,  it  becomes  wild,  by  repetition.  In  the  end 
30 


THE    TELEGRAPH   POLES 

a  dog  walks  about  as  startling  and  undecipher- 
able as  Leviathan  or  Croquemitaine. 

It  may  be  that  this  explains  the  repetitions  in 
Nature ;  it  may  be  for  this  reason  that  there  are 
so  many  million  leaves  and  pebbles.  Perhaps 
they  are  not  repeated  so  that  they  may  grow 
familiar.  Perhaps  they  are  repeated  only  in  the 
hope  that  they  may  at  last  grow  unfamiliar. 
Perhaps  a  man  is  not  startled  at  the  first  cat  he 
sees,  but  jumps  into  the  air  with  surprise  at  the 
seventy-ninth  cat.  Perhaps  he  has  to  pass 
through  thousands  of  pine  trees  before  he  finds 
the  one  that  is  really  a  pine  tree.  However  this 
may  be,  there  is  something  singularly  thrilling, 
even  something  urgent  and  intolerant,  about  the 
endless  forest  repetitions;  there  is  the  hint  of 
something  like  madness  in  that  musical  monot- 
ony of  the  pines. 

I  said  something  like  this  to  my  friend;  and 
he  answered  with  sardonic  truth,  "  Ah,  you  wait 
till  we  come  to  a  telegraph  post.'* 

•  •  •  •  • 

My  friend  was  right,  as  he  occasionally  is  in 
31 


THE    TELEGRAPH   POLES 

our  discussions,  especially  upon  points  of  fact. 
We  had  crossed  the  pine  forest  by  one  of  its 
paths  which  happened  to  follow  the  wires  of  the 
provincial  telegraphy ;  and  though  the  poles  oc- 
curred at  long  intervals  they  made  a  difference 
when  they  came.  The  instant  we  came  to  the 
straight  pole  we  could  see  that  the  pines  were 
not  really  straight.  It  was  like  a  hundred 
straight  lines  drawn  with  schoolboy  pencils  all 
brought  to  judgment  suddenly  by  one  straight 
line  drawn  with  a  ruler.  All  the  amateur  lines 
seemed  to  reel  to  right  and  left.  A  moment  be- 
fore I  could  have  sworn  they  stood  as  straight  as 
lances;  now  I  could  see  them  curve  and  waver 
everywhere,  like  scimitars  and  yataghans.  Com- 
pared with  the  telegraph  post  the  pines  were 
crooked — and  alive.  \  That  lonely  vertical  rod 
at  once  deformed  and  enfranchised  the  forest! 
It  tangled  it  all  together  and  yet  made  it  free, 
like  any  grotesque  undergrowth  of  oak  or  holly. 
"  Yes,"  said  my  gloomy  friend,  answering  my 
thoughts.  "  You  don't  know  what  a  wicked 
shameful  thing  straightness  is  if  you  think  these 
32 


THE   TELEGRAPH   POLES 

trees  are  straight.  You  never  will  know  till 
your  precious  intellectual  civilisation  builds  a 
forty-mile  forest  of  telegraph  poles." 

We  had  started  walking  from  our  temporary 
home  later  in  the  day  than  we  intended ;  and  the 
long  afternoon  was  already  lengthening  itself 
out  into  a  yellow  evening  when  we  came  out  of 
the  forest  on  to  the  hills  above  a  strange  town 
or  village,  of  which  the  lights  had  already  begun 
to  glitter  in  the  darkening  valley.  The  change 
had  already  happened  which  is  the  test  and 
definition  of  evening.  I  mean  that  while  the  sky 
seemed  still  as  bright,  the  earth  was  growing; 
blacker  against  it,  especially  at  the  edges,  the 
hills  and  the  pine-tops.  This  brought  out  yet 
more  clearly  the  owlish  secrecy  of  pine-woods; 
and  my  friend  cast  a  regretful  glance  at  them 
as  he  came  out  under  the  sky.  Then  he  turned 
to  the  view  in  front;  and,  as  it  happened,  one 
of  the  telegraph  posts  stood  up  in  front  of  him 
in  the  last  sunlight.  It  was  no  longer  crossed 
and  softened  by  the  more  delicate  lines  of  pine 
33 


THE   TELEGRAPH   POLES 

wood;  it  stood  up  ugly,  arbitrary,  and  angular 
as  any  crude  figure  in  geometry.  My  friend 
stopped,  pointing  his  stick  at  it,  and  all  his 
anarchic  philosophy  rushed  to  his  lips. 

"  Demon,"  he  said  to  me  briefly,  "  behold  your 
work.  That  palace  of  proud  trees  behind  us  is 
what  the  world  was  before  you  civilised  men, 
Christians  or  democrats  or  the  rest,  came  to 
make  it  dull  with  your  dreary  rules  of  morals 
and  equality.  In  the  silent  fight  of  that  forest, 
tree  fights  speechless  against  tree,  branch 
against  branch.  And  the  upshot  of  that  dumb 
battle  is  inequality — and  beauty.  Now  lift  up 
your  eyes  and  look  at  equality  and  ugliness. 
See  how  regularly  the  white  buttons  are  ar- 
ranged on  that  black  stick,  and  defend  your  dog- 
mas if  you  dare." 

"  Is  that  telegraph  post  so  much  a  symbol  of 
democracy.'^"  I  asked.  "I  fancy  that  while 
three  men  have  made  the  telegraph  to  get  divi- 
dends, about  a  thousand  men  have  preserved 
the  forest  to  cut  wood.  But  if  the  telegraph 
pole  is  hideous  (as  I  admit)  it  is  not  due  to 
34 


THE    TELEGRAPH   POLES 

doctrine  but  rather  to  commercial  anarchy.  If 
any  one  had  a  doctrine  about  a  telegraph  pole 
it  might  be  carved  in  ivory  and  decked  with  gold. 
Modern  things  are  ugly,  because  modem  men 
are  careless,  not  because  they  are  careful." 

"  No,"  answered  my  friend  with  his  eye  on  the 
end  of  a  splendid  and  sprawling  sunset,  "  there  is 
something  intrinsically  deadening  about  the  very 
idea  of  a  doctrine.  A  straight  line  is  always 
ugly.  Beauty  is  always  crooked.  These  rigid 
posts  at  regular  intervals  are  ugly  because  they 
are  carrying  across  the  world  the  real  message 
of  democracy." 

"  At  this  moment,"  I  answered,  "  they  are 
probably  carrying  across  the  world  the  message, 
*  Buy  Bulgarian  Rails.'  They  are  probably  the 
prompt  communication  between  some  two  of  the 
wealthiest  and  wickedest  of  His  children  with 
whom  God  has  ever  had  patience.  No;  these 
telegraph  poles  are  ugly  and  detestable,  they  are 
inhuman  and  indecent.  But  their  baseness  lies 
in  their  privacy,  not  in  their  publicity.  That 
black  stick  with  white  buttons  is  not  the  creation 
35 


THE   TELEGRAPH   POLES 

of  the  soul  of  a  multitude.     It  is  the  mad  cre- 
ation of  the  souls  of  two  millionaires." 

"  At  least  you  have  to  explain,"  answered  my 
friend  gravely,  "  how  it  is  that  the  hard  demo- 
cratic doctrine  and  the  hard  telegraphic  outline 
have  appeared  together;  you  have  .  .  .  But 
bless  my  soul,  we  must  be  getting  home.  I  had 
no  idea  it  was  so  late.  Let  me  see,  I  think  this 
is  our  way  through  the  wood.  Come,  let 
us  both  curse  the  telegraph  post  for  entirely 
different  reasons  and  get  home  before  it  is 
dark." 

We  did  not  get  home  before  it  was  dark.  For 
one  reason  or  another  we  had  underestimated  the 
swiftness  of  twilight  and  the  suddenness  of  night, 
especially  in  the  threading  of  thick  woods. 
When  my  friend,  after  the  first  five  minutes' 
march,  had  fallen  over  a  log,  and  I,  ten  minutes 
after,  had  stuck  nearly  to  the  knees  in  mire,  we 
began  to  have  some  suspicion  of  our  direction. 
At  last  my  friend  said,  in  a  low,  husky  voice : 

"  I'm  afraid  we're  on  the  wrong  path.  It's 
pitch  dark." 

36 


THE    TELEGRAPH   POLES 

"  I  thought  we  went  the  right  way/'  I  said, 
tentatively. 

"  Well,"  he  said ;  and  then,  after  a  long  pause, 
"  I  can't  see  any  telegraph  poles.  Pve  been 
looking  for  them." 

"  So  have  I,"  I  said.     "  They're  so  straight." 

We  groped  away  for  about  two  hours  of  dark- 
ness in  the  thick  of  the  fringe  of  trees  which 
seemed  to  dance  round  us  in  derision.  Here 
and  there,  however,  it  was  possible  to  trace  the 
outline  of  something  just  too  erect  and  rigid  to 
be  a  pine  tree.  By  these  we  finally  felt  our 
way  home,  arriving  in  a  cold  green  twilight  be- 
fore dawn. 


37 


A    DRAMA    OF    DOLLS 

In  a  small  grey  town  of  stone  in  one  of  the  great 
Yorkshire  dales,  which  is  full  of  history,  I  en- 
tered a  hall  and  saw  an  old  puppet-play  exactly 
as  our  fathers  saw  it  five  hundred  years  ago.  It 
was  admirably  translated  from  the  old  German, 
and  was  the  original  tale  of  Faust.  The  dolls 
were  at  once  comic  and  convincing;  but  if  you 
cannot  at  once  laugh  at  a  thing  and  believe  in  it, 
you  have  no  business  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Or  in 
the  world,  for  that  matter. 

The  puppet-play  in  question  belongs,  I  be- 
lieve, to  the  fifteenth  century;  and  indeed  the 
whole  legend  of  Dr.  Faustus  has  the  colour  of 
that  grotesque  but  somewhat  gloomy  time.  It 
is  very  unfortunate  that  we  so  often  know  a 
thing  that  is  past  only  by  its  tail  end.  We  re- 
member yesterday  only  by  its  sunsets.  There 
are  many  instances.  One  is  Napoleon.  We  al- 
ways think  of  him  as  a  fat  old  despot,  ruling 
38 


A   DRAMA   OF   DOLLS 

Europe  with  a  ruthless  military  machine.  But 
that,  as  Lord  Rosebery  would  say,  was  only 
"  The  Last  Phase  " ;  or  at  least  the  last  but  one. 
During  the  strongest  and  most  startling  part  of 
his  career,  the  time  that  made  him  immortal. 
Napoleon  was  a  sort  of  boy,  and  not  a  bad  sort 
of  boy  either,  bullet-headed  and  ambitious,  but 
honestly  in  love  with  a  woman,  and  honestly 
enthusiastic  for  a  cause,  the  cause  of  French 
justice  and  equality. 

Another  instance  is  the  Middle  Ages,  which  we 
also  remember  only  by  the  odour  of  their 
ultimate  decay.  We  think  of  the  life  of  the 
Middle  Ages  as  a  dance  of  death,  full  of  devils 
and  deadly  sins,  lepers  and  burning  heretics. 
But  this  was  not  the  life  of  the  Middle  Ages,  but 
the  death  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  the  spirit  of 
Louis  XI  and  Richard  III,  not  of  Louis  IX  and 
Edward  I. 

This  grim  but  not  unwholesome  fable  of  Dr. 

Faustus,  with  its  rebuke  to  the  mere  arrogance 

of  learning,  is  sound  and  stringent  enough;  but 

it  is  not  a  fair  sample  of  the  mediaeval  soul  at  its 

39 


A    DRAMA   OF   DOLLS 

happiest  and  sanest.  The  heart  of  the  true 
Middle  Ages  might  be  found  far  better,  for  in- 
stance, in  the  noble  tale  of  Tannhauser,  in  which 
the  dead  staff  broke  into  leaf  and  flower  to  re- 
buke the  pontiff  who  had  declared  even  one  hu- 
man being  beyond  the  strength  of  sorrow  and 
pardon. 

•  •  •  •  • 

But  there  were  in  the  play  two  great  human 
ideas  which  the  mediaeval  mind  never  lost  its  grip 
on,  through  the  heaviest  nightmares  of  its  dis- 
solution. They  were  the  two  great  jokes  of 
mediasvalism,  as  they  are  the  two  eternal  jokes 
of  mankind.  Wherever  those  two  jokes  exist 
there  is  a  little  health  and  hope ;  wherever  they 
are  absent,  pride  and  insanity  are  present.  The 
first  is  the  idea  that  the  poor  man  ought  to  get 
the  better  of  the  rich  man.  The  other  is 
the  idea  that  the  husband  is  afraid  of  the 
wife. 

I  have  heard  that  there  is  a  place  under  the 
knee  which,  when  struck,  should  produce  a  sort 
of  jump ;  and  that  if  you  do  not  jump,  you  are 
40 


A   DRAMA   OF   DOLLS 

mad.  I  am  sure  that  there  are  some  such  places 
in  the  soul.  When  the  human  spirit  does  not 
jump  with  joy  at  either  of  those  two  old  jokes, 
the  human  spirit  must  be  struck  with  incurable 
paralysis.  There  is  hope  for  people  who  have 
gone  down  into  the  hells  of  greed  and  economic 
oppression  (at  least,  I  hope  there  is,  for  we  are 
such  a  people  ourselves),  but  there  is  no  hope 
for  a  people  that  does  not  exult  in  the  abstract 
idea  of  the  peasant  scoring  off  the  prince.  There 
is  hope  for  the  idle  and  the  adulterous,  for  the 
men  that  desert  their  wives  and  the  men  that 
beat  their  wives.  But  there  is  no  hope  for  men 
who  do  not  boast  that  their  wives  bully  them. 

The  first  idea,  the  idea  about  the  man  at  the 
bottom  coming  out  on  top,  is  expressed  in  this 
puppet-play  in  the  person  of  Dr.  Faustus' 
servant,  Caspar.  Sentimental  old  Tories,  re- 
gretting the  feudal  times,  sometimes  complain 
that  in  these  days  Jack  is  as  good  as  his  master. 
But  most  of  the  actual  tales  of  the  feudal  times 
turn  on  the  idea  that  Jack  is  much  better  than 
4X 


A   DRAMA   OF   DOLLS 

his  master,  and  certainly  it  is  so  in  the  case  of 
Caspar  and  Faust.  The  play  ends  with  the 
damnation  of  the  learned  and  illustrious  doctor, 
followed  by  a  cheerful  and  animated  dance  by 
Caspar,  who  has  been  made  watchman  of  the 
city. 

But  there  was  a  much  keener  stroke  of 
mediasval  irony  earlier  in  the  play.  The  learned 
doctor  has  been  ransacking  all  the  libraries  of 
the  earth  to  find  a  certain  rare  formula,  now 
almost  unknown,  by  which  he  can  control  the 
infernal  deities.  At  last  he  procures  the  one 
precious  volume,  opens  it  at  the  proper  page, 
and  leaves  it  on  the  table  while  he  seeks  some 
other  part  of  his  magic  equipment.  The 
servant  comes  in,  reads  off  the  formula,  and  im- 
mediately becomes  an  emperor  of  the  elemental 
spirits.  He  gives  them  a  horrible  time.  He 
summons  and  dismisses  them  alternately  with  the 
rapidity  of  a  piston-rod  working  at  high  speed ; 
he  keeps  them  flying  between  the  doctor's  house 
and  their  own  more  unmentionable  residences  till 
they  faint  with  rage  and  fatigue.  There  is  all 
42 


A   DRAMA   OF   DOLLS 

the  best  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  that ;  the  idea  of 
the  great  levellers,  luck  and  laughter ;  the  idea  of 
a  sense  of  humour  defying  and  dominating  hell. 
One  of  the  best  points  in  the  play  as  per- 
formed in  this  Yorkshire  town  was  that  the 
servant  Caspar  was  made  to  talk  Yorkshire,  in- 
stead of  the  German  rustic  dialect  which  he 
talked  in  the  original.  That  also  smacks  of  the 
good  air  of  that  epoch.  In  those  old  pictures 
and  poems  they  always  made  things  living  by 
making  them  local.  Thus,  queerly  enough,  the 
one  touch  that  was  not  in  the  old  mediaeval  ver- 
sion was  the  most  mediaeval  touch  of  all. 

That  other  ancient  and  Christian  jest,  that  a 
wife  is  a  holy  terror,  occurs  in  the  last  scene, 
where  the  doctor  (who  wears  a  fur  coat  through- 
out, to  make  him  seem  more  offensively  rich  and 
refined)  is  attempting  to  escape  from  the  aveng- 
ing demons,  and  meets  his  old  servant  in  the 
street.  The  servant  obligingly  points  out  a 
house  with  a  blue  door,  and  strongly  recom- 
mends Dr.  Faustus  to  take  refuge  in  it.  "  My 
43 


A   DRAMA   OP  DOLLS 

old  woman  lives  there,"  he  says,  "  and  the  devils 
are  more  afraid  of  her  than  you  are  of  them." 
Faustus  does  not  take  this  advice,  but  goes  on 
meditating  and  reflecting  (which  had  been  his 
mistake  all  along)  until  the  clock  strikes  twelve, 
and  dreadful  voices  talk  Latin  in  heaven.  So 
Faustus,  in  his  fur  coat,  is  carried  away  by  little 
black  imps ;  and  serve  him  right,  for  being  an 
Intellectual. 


U 


THE    MAN    AND    HIS    NEWSPAPER 

At  a  little  station,  which  I  decline  to  specify, 
somewhere  between  Oxford  and  Guildford,  I 
missed  a  connection  or  miscalculated  a  route  in 
such  manner  that  I  was  left  stranded  for  rather 
more  than  an  hour.  I  adore  waiting  at  railway 
stations,  but  this  was  not  a  very  sumptuous 
specimen.  There  was  nothing  on  the  platform 
except  a  chocolate  automatic  machine,  which 
eagerly  absorbed  pennies  but  produced  no  corre- 
sponding chocolate,  and  a  small  paper-stall  with 
a  few  remaining  copies  of  a  cheap  imperial 
organ  which  we  will  call  the  Dally  Wire.  It 
does  not  matter  which  imperial  organ  it  was,  as 
they  all  say  the  same  thing. 

Though  I  knew  it  quite  well  already,  I  read  it 
with  gravity  as  I  strolled  out  of  the  station  and 
up  the  country  road.  It  opened  with  the  strik- 
ing phrase  that  the  Radicals  were  setting  class 
against  class.  It  went  on  to  remark  that 
45 


MAN   AND   HIS   NEWSPAPER 

nothing  had  contributed  more  to  make  our  Em- 
pire happy  and  enviable,  to  create  that  obvious 
list  of  glories  which  you  can  supply  for  your- 
self, the  prosperity  of  all  classes  in  our  great 
cities,  our  populous  and  growing  villages,  the 
success  of  our  rule  in  Ireland,  etc.,  etc.,  than  the 
sound  Anglo-Saxon  readiness  of  all  classes  in  the 
State  "  to  work  heartily  hand-in-hand."  It  was 
this  alone,  the  paper  assured  me,  that  had  saved 
us  from  the  horrors  of  the  French  Revolution. 
"  It  is  easy  for  the  Radicals,"  it  went  on  very 
solemnly,  "  to  make  jokes  about  the  dukes.  Very 
few  of  these  revolutionary  gentlemen  have  given 
to  the  poor  one  half  of  the  earnest  thought,  tire- 
less unselfishness,  and  truly  Christian  patience 
that  are  given  to  them  by  the  great  landlords  of 
this  country.  We  are  very  sure  that  the  Eng- 
lish people,  with  their  sturdy  common  sense, 
will  prefer  to  be  in  the  hands  of  English  gentle- 
men rather  than  in  the  miry  claws  of  Socialistic 
buccaneers." 

Just  when  I  had  reached  this  point  I  nearly 
46 


MAN   AND   HIS   NEWSPAPER 

ran  into  a  man.  Despite  the  populousness  and 
growth  of  our  villages,  he  appeared  to  be  the 
only  man  for  miles,  but  the  road  up  which  I  had 
wandered  turned  and  narrowed  with  equal 
abruptness,  and  I  nearly  knocked  him  off  the 
gate  on  which  he  was  leaning.  I  pulled  up  to 
apologise,  and  since  he  seemed  ready  for  society, 
and  even  pathetically  pleased  with  it,  I  tossed 
the  Daily  Wire  over  a  hedge  and  fell  into  speech 
with  him.  He  wore  a  wreck  of  respectable 
clothes,  and  his  face  had  that  plebeian  refinement 
which  one  sees  in  small  tailors  and  watchmakers, 
in  poor  men  of  sedentary  trades.  Behind  him  a 
twisted  group  of  winter  trees  stood  up  as  gaunt 
and  tattered  as  himself,  but  I  do  not  think  that 
the  tragedy  that  he  symbolised  was  a  mere  fancy 
from  the  spectral  wood.  There  was  a  fixed  look 
m  his  face  which  told  that  he  was  one  of  those 
who  in  keeping  body  and  soul  together  have  diflS^L. 
culties  not  only  with  the  body,  but  also  with  the 
soul. 

He  was  a  Cockney  by  birth,  and  retained  the 
touching  accent  of  those  streets  from  which  I  am 
47 


MAN   AND   HIS   NEWSPAPER 

an  exile;  but  he  had  lived  nearly  all  his  life  in 
this  countryside;  and  he  began  to  tell  me  the 
affairs  of  it  in  that  formless,  tail-foremost  way 
in  which  the  poor  gossip  about  their  great 
neighbours.  Names  kept  coming  and  going  in 
the  narrative  like  charms  or  spells,  unaccom- 
panied by  any  biographical  explanation.  In 
particular  the  name  of  somebody  called  Sir 
Joseph  multiplied  itself  with  the  omnipresence  of 
a  deity.  I  took  Sir  Joseph  to  be  the  principal 
landowner  of  the  district;  and  as  the  confused 
picture  unfolded  itself,  I  began  to  form  a  definite 
and  by  no  means  pleasing  picture  of  Sir  Joseph 
He  was  spoken  of  in  a  strange  way,  frigid  and 
yet  familiar,  as  a  child  might  speak  of  a  step- 
mother or  an  unavoidable  nurse;  something  in- 
timate, but  by  no  means  tender ;  something  that 
was  waiting  for  you  by  your  own  bed  and  board ; 
that  told  you  to  do  this  and  forbade  you  to  do 
that,  with  a  caprice  that  was  cold  and  yet  some- 
how personal.  It  did  not  appear  that  Sir 
Joseph  was  popular,  but  he  was  "  a  household 
word."  He  was  not  so  much  a  public  man  as  a 
48 


MAN   AND   HIS   NEWSPAPER 

sort  of  private  god  or  omnipotence.  The  par- 
ticular man  to  whom  I  spoke  said  he  had  "  been 
in  trouble,"  and  that  Sir  Joseph  had  been 
"  pretty  hard  on  him." 

And  under  that  grey  and  silver  cloudland, 
with  a  background  of  those  frost-bitten  and 
wind-tortured  trees,  the  little  Londoner  told  me 
a  tale  which,  true  or  false,  was  as  heartrending 
as  Romeo  and  Juliet. 

•  •  •  •  • 

He  had  slowly  built  up  in  the  village  a  small 
business  as  a  photographer,  and  he  was  engaged 
to  a  girl  at  one  of  the  lodges,  whom  he  loved 
with  passion.  "  I'm  the  sort  that  'ad  better 
marry,"  he  said;  and  for  all  his  frail  figure  I 
knew  what  he  meant.  But  Sir  Joseph,  and 
especially  Sir  Joseph's  wife,  did  not  want  a 
photographer  in  the  village;  it  made  the  girls 
vain,  or  perhaps  they  disliked  this  particular 
photographer.  He  worked  and  worked  until 
he  had  just  enough  to  marry  on  honestly ;  and 
almost  on  the  eve  of  his  wedding  the  lease  ex- 
pired, and  Sir  Joseph  appeared  in  all  his  glory. 
49 


MAN   AND   HIS   NEWSPAPER 

He  refused  to  renew  the  lease;  and  the  man 
went  wildly  elsewhere.  But  Sir  Joseph  was 
ubiquitous;  and  the  whole  of  that  place  was 
barred  against  him.  In  all  that  country  he 
could  not  find  a  shed  to  which  to  bring  home 
his  bride.  The  man  appealed  and  explained; 
but  he  was  disliked  as  a  demagogue,  as  well  as  a 
photographer.  Then  it  was  as  if  a  black  cloud 
came  across  the  winter  sky;  for  I  knew  what 
was  coming.  I  forget  even  in  what  words  he 
told  of  Nature  maddened  and  set  free.  But  I 
still  see,  as  in  a  photograph,  the  grey  muscles 
of  the  winter  trees  standing  out  like  tight  ropes, 
as  if  all  Nature  were  on  the  rack. 

"  She  'ad  to  go  away,"  he  said. 

"  Wouldn't  her  parents,"  I  began,  and  hes- 
itated on  the  word  "  forgive." 

"  Oh,  her  people  forgave  her,"  he  said. 
"  But  Her  Ladyship " 

"  Her  Ladyship  made  the  sun  and  moon  and 
stars,"  I  said,  impatiently.  "  So  of  course  she 
can  come  between  a  mother  and  the  child  of  her 
body." 

50 


MAN   AND   HIS   NEWSPAPER 

"  Well,  it  does  seem  a  bit  'ard  .  .  ."  he  be- 
gan with  a  break  in  his  voice. 

"  But,  good  Lord,  man,"  I  cried,  "  it  isn't  a 
matter  of  hardness!  It's  a  matter  of  impious 
and  indecent  wickedness.  If  your  Sir  Joseph 
knew  the  passions  he  was  playing  with,  he  did 
you  a  wrong  for  which  in  many  Christian  coun- 
tries he  would  have  a  knife  in  him." 

The  man  continued  to  look  across  the  frozen 
fields  with  a  frown.  He  certainly  told  his  tale 
with  real  resentment,  whether  it  was  true  or 
false,  or  only  exaggerated.  He  was  certainly 
sullen  and  injured;  but  he  did  not  seem  to 
think  of  any  avenue  of  escape.  At  last  he 
said: 

"  Well,  it's  a  bad  world ;  let's  'ope  there's  a 
better,  one." 

"  Amen,"  I  said.  "  But  when  I  think  of  Sir 
Joseph,  I  understand  how  men  have  hoped  there 
was  a  worse  one." 

Then  we  were  silent  for  a  long  time  and  felt 
the  cold  of  the  day  crawling  up,  and  at  last  I 
said,  abruptly: 

61 


MAN   AND   HIS   NEWSPAPER 

"  The  other  day  at  a  Budget  meeting,  I 
heard '' 

He  took  his  elbows  off  the  stile  and  seemed 
to  change  from  head  to  foot  like  a  man  com- 
ing out  of  sleep  with  a  yawn.  He  said  in  a 
totally  new  voice,  louder  but  much  more  care- 
less, "  Ah,  yes,  sir,  .  .  .  this  'ere  Budget  .  .  • 
the  Radicals  are  doing  a  lot  of  'arm." 

I  listened  intently,  and  he  went  on.  He  said 
with  a  sort  of  careful  precision,  "  Settin'  class 
against  class ;  that's  what  I  call  it.  Why, 
what's  made  our  Empire  except  the  readiness  of 
all  classes  to  work  'eartily  'and-in-'and .?  " 

He  walked  a  little  up  and  down  the  lane  and 
stamped  with  the  cold.  Then  he  said,  "  What 
I  say  is,  what  else  kept  us  from  the  'orrors  of 
the  French  Revolution.? " 

My  memory  is  good,  and  I  waited  in  tense 
eagerness  for  the  phrase  that  came  next.  "  They 
may  laugh  at  dukes;  I'd  like  to  see  them  'alf 
as  kind  and  Christian  and  patient  as  lots  of  the 
landlords  are.  Let  me  tell  you,  sir,"  he  said, 
facing  round  at  me  with  the  final  air  of  one 
68 


MAN   AND    HIS   NEWSPAPER 

launching  a  paradox.  "  The  English  people 
'ave  some  common  sense,  and  they'd  rather  be 
in  the  'ands  of  gentlemen  than  in  the  claws  of 
a  lot  of  Socialist  thieves." 

I  had  an  indescribable  sense  that  I  ought  to 
applaud,  as  if  I  were  a  public  meeting.  The 
insane  separation  in  the  man's  soul  between  his 
experience  and  his  ready-made  theory  was  but 
a  type  of  what  covers  a  quarter  of  England. 
As  he  turned  away,  I  saw  the  Daily  Wire  stick- 
ing out  of  his  shabby  pocket.  He  bade  me 
farewell  in  quite  a  blaze  of  catchwords,  and 
went  stumping  up  the  road.  I  saw  his  figure 
grow  smaller  and  smaller  in  the  great  green 
landscape;  even  as  the  Free  Man  has  grown 
smaller  and  smaller  in  the  English  countryside. 


53 


>■■■• 


THE    APPETITE    OF    EARTH 

I  WAS  walking  the  other  day  in  a  kitchen  garden, 
which  I  find  has  somehow  got  attached  to  my 
premises,  and  I  was  wondering  why  I  liked  it. 
After  a  prolonged  spiritual  self-analysis  I  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  I  like  a  kitchen  garden 
because  it  contains  things  to  eat.  I  do  not 
mean  that  a  kitchen  garden  is  ugly;  a  kitchen 
garden  is  often  very  beautiful.  The  mixture 
of  green  and  purple  on  some  monstrous  cabbage 
is  much  subtler  and  grander  than  the  mere 
freakish  and  theatrical  splashing  of  yellow  and 
violet  on  a  pansy.  Few  of  the  flowers  merely 
meant  for  ornament  are  so  ethereal  as  a  potato. 
A  kitchen  garden  is  as  beautiful  as  an  orchard ; 
but  why  is  it  that  the  word  "  orchard  "  sounds 
as  beautiful  as  the  word  "  flower-garden,"  and 
yet  also  sounds  more  satisfactory?  I  suggest 
again  my  extraordinarily  dark  and  delicate  dis- 
covery: that  it  contains  things  to  eat. 
54 
\ 


THE   APPETITE    OF   EARTH 

The  cabbage  is  a  solid ;  it  can  be  approached 
from  all  sides  at  once;  it  can  be  realised  by  all 
senses  at  once.  Compared  with  that  the  sun- 
flower, which  can  only  be  seen,  is  a  mere  pat- 
tern, a  thing  painted  on  a  flat  wall.  Now,  it  is 
this  sense  of  the  solidity  of  things  that  can  only 
be  uttered  by  the  metaphor  of  eating.  To  ex- 
press the  cubic  content  of  a  turnip,  you  must 
be  all  round  it  at  once.  The  only  way  to  get 
all  round  a  turnip  at  once  is  to  eat  the  turnip^ 
I  think  any  poetic  mind  that  has  loved  solidity, 
the  thickness  of  trees,  the  squareness  of  stones, 
the  firmness  of  clay,  must  have  sometimes  wished 
that  they  were  things  to  eat.  If  only  brown 
peat  tasted  as  good  as  it  looks;  if  only  white 
fir-wood  were  digestible!  We  talk  rightly  of 
giving  stones  for  bread:  but  there  are  in  the 
Geological  Museum  certain  rich  crimson  mar- 
bles, certain  split  stones  of  blue  and  green,  that 
make  me  wish  my  teeth  were  stronger. 

Somebody  staring  into  the  sky  with  the  same 
ethereal  appetite  declared  that  the  moon  was 
made  of  green  cheese.  I  never  could  conscien- 
66 


THE    APPETITE    OF   EARTH 

tiously  accept  the  full  doctrine.  I  am  Modern- 
ist in  this  matter.  That  the  moon  is  made  of 
cheese  I  have  believed  from  childhood;  and  in 
the  course  of  every  month  a  giant  (of  my  ac- 
quaintance) bites  a  big  round  piece  out  of  it. 
This  seems  to  me  a  doctrine  that  is  above  rea- 
son, but  not  contrary  to  it.  But  that  the  cheese 
is  green  seems  to  be  in  some  degree  actually 
contradicted  by  the  senses  and  the  reason;  first 
because  if  the  moon  were  made  of  green  cheese 
it  would  be  inhabited ;  and  second  because  if  it 
were  made  of  green  cheese  it  would  be  green.  A 
blue  moon  is  said  to  be  an  unusual  sight ;  but  I 
cannot  think  that  a  green  one  is  much  more 
common.  In  fact,  I  think  I  have  seen  the  moon 
looking  like  every  other  sort  of  cheese  except  a 
green  cheese.  I  have  seen  it  look  exactly  like  a 
cream  cheese:  a  circle  of  warm  white  upon  a 
warm  faint  violet  sky  above  a  cornfield  in  Kent. 
I  have  seen  it  look  very  like  a  Dutch  cheese, 
rising  a  dull  red  copper  disk  amid  masts  and 
dark  waters  at  Honfleur.  I  have  seen  it  look 
like  an  ordinary  sensible  Cheddar  cheese  in  an 
56 


THE   APPETITE   OF   EARTH 

ordinary  sensible  Prussian  blue  sky ;  and  I  have 
once  seen  it  so  naked  and  ruinous-looking,  so 
strangely  lit  up,  that  it  looked  like  a  Gruyere 
cheese,  that  awful  volcanic  cheese  that  has  hor- 
rible holes  in  it,  as  if  it  had  come  in  boiling  un- 
natural milk  from  mysterious  and  unearthly 
cattle.  But  I  have  never  yet  seen  the  lunar 
cheese  green;  and  I  incline  to  the  opinion  that 
the  moon  is  not  old  enough.  The  moon,  like 
everything  else,  will  ripen  by  the  end  of  the 
world;  and  in  the  last  days  we  shall  see  it  tak- 
ing on  those  volcanic  sunset  colours,  and  leap- 
ing|jyith  that  enormous  and  fantastic  life. 

Irot  this  is  a  parenthesis;  and  one  perhaps 
slightly  lacking  in  prosaic  actuality.  What- 
ever may  be  the  value  of  the  above  speculations, 
the  phrase  about  the  moon  and  green  cheese 
remains  a  good  example  of  this  imagery  of  eat- 
ing and  drinking  on  a  large  scale.  The  same 
huge  fancy  is  in  the  phrase  "  if  all  the  trees 
were  bread  and  cheese  "  which  I  have  cited  else- 
where in  this  connection;  and  in  that  noble 
nightmare  of  a  Scandinavian  legend,  in  which 
67 


THE   APPETITE    OF   EARTH 

Thor  drinks  the  deep  sea  nearly  dry  out  of  a 
horn.  In  an  essay  like  the  present  (first  in- 
tended as  a  paper  to  be  read  before  the  Royal 
Society)  one  cannot  be  too  exact;  and  I  will 
concede  that  my  theory  of  the  gradual  vires- 
cence  of  our  satellite  is  to  be  regarded  rather 
as  an  alternative  theory  than  as  a  law  finally 
demonstrated  and  universally  accepted  by  the 
scientific  world.  It  is  a  hypothesis  that  holds 
the  field,  as  the  scientists  say  of  a  theory  when 
•  there  is  no  evidence  for  it  so  far. 

But  the  reader  needJje  under  no  apprehension 

—    l^t 

or  seriously  altering  (by  large  semicircular 
mouthfuls)  the  exquisite  outline  of  the  moun- 
tains. This  feeling  for  expressing  a  fresh 
solidity  by  the  image  of  eating  is  really  a  very 
old  one.  So  far  from  being  a  paradox  of  per- 
versity, it  is  one  of  the  oldest  commonplaces  of 
religion.  If  any  one  wandering  about  wants  to 
have  a  good  trick  or  test  for  separating  the 
wrong  idealism  from  the  right,  I  will  give  him 
68 


that  I  have  suddenly  gone  mad,  and  shall 
biting  large  pieces  out  of  the  trunks  of 


THE   APPETITE    OF   EARTH 

one  on  the  spot.  It  is  a  mark  of  false  religion 
that  it  is  always  trying  to  express  concrete  facts 
as  abstract ;  it  calls  sex  affinity ;  it  calls  wine  al- 
cohol; it  calls  brute  starvation  the  economic 
problem.  The  test  of  true  religion  is  that  its 
energy  drives  exactly  the  other  way;  it  is  al- 
ways trying  to  make  men  feel  truths  as  facts; 
always  trying  to  make  abstract  things  as  plain 
and  solid  as  concrete  things;  always  trying  to 
make  men,  not  merely  admit  the  truth,  but  see, 
smell,  handle,  hear,  and  devour  the  truth.  All 
great  spiritual  scriptures  are  full  of  the  in- 
vitation not  to  test,  but  to  taste;  not  to  ex- 
amine, but  to  eat.  Their  phrases  are  full  of 
living  water  and  heavenly  bread,  mysterious 
manna  and  dreadful  wine.  Worldliness,  and 
the  polite  society  of  the  world,  has  despised  this 
instinct  of  eafmg;  but  religion  has  never 
despised  it.  W^en  we  look  at  a  firm,  fat, 
white  clifF  of  cflHpat  Dover,  I  do  not  suggest 
that  we  should  desire  to  eat  it;  that  would  be 
highly  abnormal.  But  I  really  mean  that  we 
should  think  it  good  to  eat ;  good  for  some  one 
59 


THE   APPETITE    OF   EARTH 

else  to  eat.  For,  indeed,  some  one  else  is  eating 
it ;  the  grass  that  grows  upon  its  top  is  devour- 
ing it  silently,  but,  doubtless,  with  an  up- 
roarious appetite. 


• 
# 


60 


SIMMONS    AND    THE     SOCIAL    TIE 

It  is  a  platitude,  and  none  the  less  true  for  that, 
that  we  need  to  have  an  ideal  in  our  minds  with 
which  to  test  all  realities.  But  it  is  equally 
true,  and  less  noted,  that  we  need  a  reality 
with  which  to  test  ideals.  Thus  I  have  selected 
Mrs.  Buttons,  a  charwoman  in  Battersea,  as  the 
touchstone  of  all  modem  theories  about  the 
mass  of  women.  Her  name  is  not  Buttons ;  she 
is  not  in  the  least  a  contemptible  nor  entirely  a 
comic  figure.  She  has  a  powerful  stoop  and 
an  ugly,  attractive  face,  a  little  like  that  of 
Huxley — without  the  whiskers,  of  course.  The 
courage  with  which  she  supports  the  most 
brutal  bad  luck  has  something  quite  creepy 
about  it.  Her  irony  is  incessant  and  inventive ; 
her  practical  charity  very  large;  and  she  is 
wholly  unaware  of  the  philosophical  use  to 
which  I  put  her. 

But  when  I  hear  the  modern  generalisations 
61 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL   TIE 

about  her  sex  on  all  sides  I  simply  substitute 
her  name,  and  see  how  the  thing  sounds  then. 
When  on  the  one  side  the  mere  sentimentalist 
says,  "  Let  woman  be  content  to  be  dainty  and 
exquisite,  a  protected  piece  of  social  art  and 
domestic  ornament,"  then  I  merely  repeat  it  to 
myself  in  the  other  form,  "  Let  Mrs.  Buttons 
be  content  to  be  dainty  and  exquisite,  a  pro- 
tected piece  of  social  art,  etc."  It  is  extraor- 
dinary what  a  difference  the  substitution  seems 
to  make.  And  on  the  other  hand,  when  some 
of  the  Suffragettes  say  in  their  pamphlets  and 
speeches,  "  Woman,  leaping  to  life  at  the  trum- 
pet call  of  Ibsen  and  Shaw,  drops  her  tawdry 
luxuries  and  demands  to  grasp  the  sceptre  of 
empire  and  the  firebrand  of  speculative 
thought  " — in  order  to  understand  such  a  sen- 
tence I  say  it  over  again  in  the  amended  form: 
"  Mrs.  Buttons,  leaping  to  life  at  the  trumpet 
call  of  Ibsen  and  Shaw,  drops  her  tawdry  lux- 
uries and  demands  to  grasp  the  sceptre  of  em- 
pire and  the  firebrand  of  speculative  thought." 
Somehow  it  sounds  quite  different.  And  yet 
62 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL    TIE 

when  jou  say  Woman  I  suppose  you  mean  the 
average  woman;  and  if  most  women  are  as 
capable  and  critical  and  morally  sound  as  Mrs. 
Buttons,  it  is  as  much  as  we  can  expect,  and  a 
great  deal  more  than  we  deserve. 

But  this  study  is  not  about  Mrs.  Buttons ;  she 
would  require  many  studies.  I  will  take  a  less 
impressive  case  of  my  principle,  the  principle  of 
keeping  in  the  mind  an  actual  personality  when 
we  are  talking  about  types  or  tendencies  or 
generalised  ideals.  Take,  for  example,  the 
question  of  the  education  of  boys.  Almost 
every  post  brings  me  pamphlets  expounding 
some  advanced  and  suggestive  scheme  of  educa- 
tion; the  pupils  are  to  be  taught  separate;  the 
sexes  are  to  be  taught  together;  there  should 
be  no  prizes;  there  should  be  no  pun- 
ishments; the  master  should  lift  the  boys 
to  his  level;  the  master  should  descend  to 
their  level;  we  should  encourage  the  heartiest 
comradeship  among  boys,  and  also  the  tenderest 
spiritual  intimacy  with  masters;  toil  must  be 
pleasant  and  holidays  must  be  instructive ;  with 
63 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL   TIE 

all  these  things  I  am  daily  impressed  and  some- 
what bewildered. 

But  on  the  great  Buttons'  principle  I  keep  in 
my  mind  and  apply  to  all  these  ideals  one  still 
vivid  fact;  the  face  and  character  of  a  par- 
ticular schoolboy  whom  I  once  knew.  I  am  not 
taking  a  mere  individual  oddity,  as  you  will 
hear.  He  was  exceptional,  and  yet  the  reverse 
of  eccentric;  he  was  (in  a  quite  sober  and  strict 
sense  of  the  words)  exceptionally  average.  He 
was  the  incarnation  and  the  exaggeration  of  a 
certain  spirit  which  is  the  common  spirit  of 
boys,  but  which  nowhere  else  became  so  obvious 
and  outrageous.  And  because  he  was  an  in- 
carnation he  was,  in  his  way,  a  tragedy. 

I  will  call  him  Simmons.  He  was  a  tall, 
healthy  figure,  strong,  but  a  little  slouching, 
and  there  was  in  his  walk  something  between  a 
slight  swagger  and  a  seaman's  roll;  he  com- 
monly had  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  His  hair 
was  dark,  straight,  and  undistinguished;  and 
his  face,  if  one  saw  it  after  his  figure,  was  some- 
64 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL    TIE 

thing  of  a  surprise.  For  while  the  form  might 
be  called  big  and  braggart,  the  face  might  have 
been  called  weak,  and  was  certainly  worried.  It 
was  a  hesitating  face,  which  seemed  to  blink 
doubtfully  in  the  daylight.  He  had  even  the 
look  of  one  who  has  received  a  buffet  that  he 
cannot  return.  In  all  occupations  he  was  the 
average  boy;  just  sufficiently  good  at  sports, 
just  sufficiently  bad  at  work  to  be  universally 
satisfactory.  But  he  was  prominent  in  noth- 
ing, for  prominence  was  to  him  a  thing  like 
bodily  pain.  He  could  not  endure,  without  dis- 
comfort amounting  to  desperation,  that  any 
boy  should  be  noticed  or  sensationally  separated 
from  the  long  line  of  boys;  for  him,  to  be  dis- 
tinguished was  to  be  disgraced. 

Those  who  interpret  schoolboys  as  merely 
wooden  and  barbarous,  unmoved  by  anything 
but  a  savage  seriousness  about  tuck  or  cricket, 
make  the  mistake  of  forgetting  how  much  of  the 
schoolboy  life  is  public  and  ceremonial,  having 
reference  to  an  ideal;  or,  if  you  like,  to  an  af- 
fectation. Boys,  like  dogs,  have  a  sort  of  ro- 
65 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL   TIE 

mantic  ritual  which  is  not  always  their  real 
selves.  And  this  romantic  ritual  is  generally 
the  ritual  of  not  being  romantic;  the  pretence 
of  being  much  more  masculine  and  materialistic 
than  they  are.  Boys  in  themselves  are  very 
sentimental.  The  most  sentimental  thing  in  the 
world  is  to  hide  your  feelings;  it  is  making  too 
much  of  them.  Stoicism  is  the  direct  product 
of  sentimentalism ;  and  schoolboys  are  senti- 
mental individually,  but  stoical  collectively. 

For  example,  there  were  numbers  of  boys  at 
my  school  besides  myself  who  took  a  private 
pleasure  in  poetry;  but  red-hot  iron  would  not 
have  induced  most  of  us  to  admit  this  to  the 
masters,  or  to  repeat  poetry  with  the  faintest 
inflection  of  rhythm  or  intelligence.  That 
would  have  been  anti-social  egoism;  we  called 
it  "  showing  off^."  I  myself  remember  running 
to  school  (an  extraordinary  thing  to  do)  with 
mere  internal  ecstasy  in  repeating  lines  of 
Walter  Scott  about  the  taunts  of  Marmion  or 
the  boasts  of  Roderick  Dhu,  and  then  repeating 
the  same  lines  in  class  with  the  colourless  deco- 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL    TIE 

rum  of  a  hurdy-gurdy.  We  all  wished  to  be 
invisible  in  our  uniformity;  a  mere  pattern  of 
Eton  collars  and  coats. 

But  Simmons  went  even  further.  He  felt  it 
as  an  insult  to  brotherly  equality  if  any  task 
or  knowledge  out  of  the  ordinary  track  was  dis- 
covered even  by  accident.  If  a  boy  had  learnt 
German  in  infancy;  or  if  a  boy  knew  some 
terms  in  music ;  or  if  a  boy  was  forced  to  feebly 
confess  that  he  had  read  "  The  Mill  on  the 
Floss  " — then  Simmons  was  in  a  perspiration 
of  discomfort.  He  felt  no  personal  anger,  still 
less  any  petty  jealousy;  what  he  felt  was  an 
honourable  and  generous  shame.  He  hated  it 
as  a  lady  hates  coarseness  in  a  pantomime;  it 
made  him  want  to  hide  himself.  Just  that  feel- 
ing of  impersonal  ignominy  which  most  of  us 
have  when  some  one  betrays  indecent  ignorance, 
Simmons  had  when  some  one  betrayed  special 
knowledge.  He  writhed  and  went  red  in  the 
face;  he  used  to  put  up  the  lid  of  his  desk  to 
hide  his  blushes  for  human  dignity,  and  from 
67 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL    TIE 

behind  this  barrier  would  whisper  protests 
which  had  the  hoarse  emphasis  of  pain.  "  O, 
shut  up,  I  say.  .  .  .  O,  I  say,  shut  up.  .  .  . 
O,  shut  it,  can't  you  ?  "  Once  when  a  little  boy 
admitted  that  he  had  heard  of  the  Highland 
claymore,  Simmons  literally  hid  his  head  inside 
his  desk  and  dropped  the  lid  upon  it  in  despera- 
tion ;  and  when  I  was  for  a  moment  transferred 
from  the  bottom  of  the  form  for  knowing  the 
name  of  Cardinal  Newman,  I  thought  he  would 
have  rushed  from  the  room. 

His  psychological  eccentricity  increased;  if 
one  can  call  that  an  eccentricity  which  was  a 
wild  worship  of  the  ordinary.  At  last  he  grew 
so  sensitive  that  he  could  not  even  bear  any 
question  answered  correctly  without  grief.  He 
felt  there  was  a  touch  of  disloyalty,  of  un- 
fraternal  individualism,  even  about  knowing  the 
right  answer  to  a  sum.  If  asked  the  date  of 
the  battle  of  Hastings,  he  considered  it  due  to 
social  tact  and  general  good  feeling  to  answer 
1067.  This  chivalrous  exaggeration  led  to 
bad  feeling  between  him  and  the  school  author- 
68 


SIMMONS   AND    SOCIAL    TIE 

ity,  which  ended  in  a  rupture  unexpectedly 
violent  in  the  case  of  so  good-humoured  a 
creature.  He  fled  from  the  school,  and  it  was 
discovered  upon  inquiry  that  he  had  fled  from 
his  home  also. 

I  never  expected  to  see  him  again;  yet  it  is 
one  of  the  two  or  three  odd  coincidences  of  my 
life  that  I  did  see  him.  At  some  public  sports 
or  recreation  ground  I  saw  a  group  of  rather 
objectless  youths,  one  of  whom  was  wearing  the 
dashing  uniform  of  a  private  in  the  Lancers. 
Inside  that  uniform  was  the  tall  figure,  shy  face, 
and  dark,  stiffs  hair  of  Simmons.  He  had  gone 
to  the  one  place  where  every  one  is  dressed  alike 
— a  regiment.  I  know  nothing  more;  perhaps 
he  was  killed  in  Africa.  But  when  England 
was  full  of  flags  and  false  triumphs,  when  every- 
body was  talking  unmanly  trash  about  the 
whelps  of  the  lion  and  the  brave  boys  in  red,  I 
often  heard  a  voice  echoing  in  the  under-caverns 
of  my  memory,  "  Shut  up  ...  O,  shut  up 
.  .  .  O,  I  say,  shut  it." 


69 


CHEESE 

My  forthcoming  work  in  five  volumes,  "  The 
Neglect  of  Cheese  in  European  Literature,"  is 
a  work  of  such  unprecedented  and  laborious  de- 
tail that  it  is  doubtful  if  I  shall  live  to  finish  it. 
Some  overflowings  from  such  a  fountain  of  in- 
formation may  therefore  be  permitted  to 
sprinkle  these  pages.  I  cannot  yet  wholly  ex- 
plain the  neglect  to  which  I  refer.  Poets  have 
been  mysteriously  silent  on  the  subject  of  cheese. 
Virgil,  if  I  remember  right,  refers  to  it  several 
times,  but  with  too  much  Roman  restraint.  He 
does  not  let  himself  go  on  cheese.  The  only 
other  poet  I  can  think  of  just  now  who  seems  to 
have  had  some  sensibility  on  the  point  was  the 
nameless  author  of  the  nursery  rhyme  which 
says :  "  If  all  the  trees  were  bread  and 
cheese  " — which  is,  indeed,  a  rich  and  gigantic 
vision  of  the  higher  gluttony.  If  all  the  trees 
were  bread  and  cheese  there  would  be  consider- 
70 


CHEESE 

able  deforestation-in  any  part  of  England  where 
I  was  living.  Wild  and  wide  woodlands  would 
reel  and  fade  before  me  as  rapidly  as  they  ran 
after  Orpheus.  Except  Virgil  and  this  anony- 
mous rhymer,  I  can  recall  no  verse  about  cheese. 
Yet  it  has  every  quality  which  we  require  in  ex- 
alted poetry.  It  is  a  short,  strong  word;  it 
rhymes  to  "breeze"  and  "seas"  (an  essential 
point)  ;  that  it  is  emphatic  in  sound  is  admitted 
even  by  the  civilisation  of  the  modem  cities. 
For  their  citizens,  with  no  apparent  intention 
except  emphasis,  will  often  say,  "  Cheese  it !  " 
or  even  "  Quite  the  cheese."  The  substance  it- 
self is  imaginative.  It  is  ancient — sometimes  in 
the  individual  case,  always  in  the  type  and  cus- 
tom. It  is  simple,  being  directly  derived  from 
milk,  which  is  one  of  the  ancestral  drinks,  not 
lightly  to  be  corrupted  with  soda-water.  You 
know,  I  hope  (though  I  myself  have  only  just 
thought  of  it),  that  the  four  rivers  of  Eden 
were  milk,  water,  wine,  and  ale.  Aerated 
waters  only  appeared  after  the  Fall. 

But  cheese  has  another  quality,  which  is  also 
71 


CHEESE 

the  very  soul  of  song.  Once  in  endeavouring 
to  lecture  in  several  places  at  once,  I  made  an 
eccentric  journey  across  England,  a  journey  of 
so  irregular  and  even  illogical  shape  that  it 
necessitated  my  having  lunch  on  four  successive 
days  in  four  roadside  inns  in  four  different 
counties.  In  each  inn  they  had  nothing  but 
bread  and  cheese ;  nor  can  I  imagine  why  a  man 
should  want  more  than  bread  and  cheese,  if  he 
can  get  enough  of  it.  In  each  inn  the  cheese 
was  good;  and  in  each  inn  it  was  different. 
There  was  a  noble  Wensleydale  cheese  in  York- 
shire, a  Cheshire  cheese  in  Cheshire,  and  so  on. 
Now,  it  is  just  here  that  true  poetic  civilisation 
differs  from  that  paltry  and  mechanical  civili- 
sation which  holds  us  all  in  bondage.  Bad 
customs  are  universal  and  rigid,  like  modem 
militarism.  Good  customs  are  universal  and 
varied,  like  native  chivalry  and  self-defence. 
Both  the  good  and  bad  civilisation  cover  us  as 
with  a  canopy,  and  protect  us  from  all  that  is 
outside.  But  a  good  civilisation  spreads  over 
us  freely  like  a  tree,  varying  and  yielding  be- 
78 


CHEESE 

cause  it  Is  alive.  A  bad  civilisation  stands  up 
and  sticks  out  above  us  like  an  umbrella — arti- 
ficial, mathematical  in  shape;  not  merely  uni- 
versal, but  uniform.  So  it  is  with  the  contrast 
between  the  substances  that  vary  and  the  sub- 
stances that  are  the  same  wherever  they  pene- 
trate. By  a  wise  doom  of  heaven  men  were 
commanded  to  eat  cheese,  but  not  the  same 
cheese.  Being  really  universal  it  varies  from 
valley  to  valley.  But  if,  let  us  say,  we  com- 
pare cheese  with  soap  (that  vastly  inferi6r  sub- 
stance), we  shall  see  that  soap  tends  more  and 
more  to  be  merely  Smith's  Soap  or  Brown's 
Soap,  sent  automatically  all  over  the  world. 
If  the  Red  Indians  have  soap  it  is  Smith's  Soap. 
If  the  Grand  Lama  has  soap  it  is  Brown's  soap. 
There  is  nothing  subtly  and  strangely  Buddhist, 
nothing  tenderly  Tibetan,  about  his  soap.  I 
fancy  the  Grand  Lama  does  not  eat  cheese  (he 
is  not  worthy),  but  if  he  does  it  is  probably  a 
local  cheese,  having  some  real  relation  to  his 
life  and  outlook.  Safety  matches,  tinned 
foods,  patent  medicines  are  sent  all  over  the 
73 


CHEESE 

world;  but  they  are  not  produced  all  over  the 
world.  Therefore  there  is  in  them  a  mere  dead 
identity,  never  that  soft  play  of  slight  variation 
which  exists  in  things  produced  everywhere  out 
of  the  soil,  in  the  milk  of  the  kine,  or  the  fruits 
of  the  orchard.  You  can  get  a  whisky  and 
soda  at  every  outpost  of  the  Empire:  that  is 
why  so  many  Empire-builders  go  mad.  But 
you  are  not  tasting  or  touching  any  environ- 
ment, as  in  the  cider  of  Devonshire  or  the 
grapes  of  the  Rhine.  You  are  not  approach- 
ing Nature  in  one  of  her  myriad  tints  of  mood, 
as  in  the  holy  act  of  eating  cheese. 

When  I  had  done  my  pilgrimage  in  the  four 
wayside  public-houses  I  reached  one  of  the 
great  northern  cities,  and  there  I  proceeded, 
with  great  rapidity  and  complete  inconsistency, 
to  a  large  and  elaborate  restaurant,  where  I 
knew  I  could  get  many  other  things  besides 
bread  and  cheese.  I  could  get  that  also,  how- 
ever ;  or  at  least  I  expected  to  get  it ;  but  I  was 
sharply  reminded  that  I  had  entered  Babylon, 
and  left  England  behind.  The  waiter  brought 
74 


CHEESE 

me  cheese,  indeed,  but  cheese  cut  up  into  con- 
temptibly small  pieces ;  and  it  is  the  awful  fact 
that,  instead  of  Christian  bread,  he  brought 
me  biscuits.  Biscuits — to  one  who  had  eaten 
the  cheese  of  four  great  countrysides!  Bis- 
cuits— to  one  who  had  proved  anew  for  himself 
the  sanctity  of  the  ancient  wedding  between 
cheese  and  bread!  I  addressed  the  waiter  in 
warm  and  moving  terms.  I  asked  him  who  he 
was  that  he  should  put  asunder  those  whom 
Humanity  had  joined.  I  asked  him  if  he  did 
not  feel,  as  an  artist,  that  a  solid  but  yielding 
substance  like  cheese  went  naturally  with  a 
solid,  yielding  substance  like  bread;  to  eat  it 
off  biscuits  is  like  eating  it  off  slates.  I  asked 
him  if,  when  he  said  his  prayers,  he  was  so 
supercilious  as  to  pray  for  his  daily  biscuits. 
He  gave  me  generally  to  understand  that  he 
was  only  obeying  a  custom  of  Modem  Society. 
I  have  therefore  resolved  to  raise  my  voice,  not 
against  the  waiter,  but  against  Modern  So- 
ciety, for  this  huge  and  unparalleled  modern 
wrong. 

75 


THE    RED    TOWN 

When  a  man  says  that  democracy  is  false  be- 
cause most  people  are  stupid,  there  are  several 
courses  which  the  philosopher  may  pursue.  The 
most  obvious  is  to  hit  him  smartly  and  with 
precision  on  the  exact  tip  of  the  nose.  But  if 
you  have  scruples  (moral  or  physical)  about 
this  course,  you  may  proceed  to  employ  Rea- 
son, which  in  this  case  has  all  the  savage  solid- 
ity of  a  blow  with  the  fist.  It  is  stupid  to  say 
that  "  most  people  "  are  stupid.  It  is  like  say- 
ing "  most  people  are  tall,"  when  it  is  obvious 
that  "  tall "  can  only  mean  taller  than  most 
people.  It  is  absurd  to  denounce  the  majority 
of  mankind  as  below  the  average  of  man- 
kind. 

Should  the  man  have  been  hammered  on  the 

nose  and  brained  with  logic,  and  should  he  still 

remain  cold,  a  third  course  opens:  lead  him  by 

the  hand   (himself  half-willing)    towards  some 

76 


THE   RED   TOWN 

sunlit  and  yet  secret  meadow  and  ask  him  who 
made  the  names  of  the  common  wild  flowers. 
They  were  ordinary  people,  so  far  as  any  one 
knows,  who  gave  to  one  flower  the  name  of  the 
Star  of  Bethlehem  and  to  another  and  much 
commoner  flower  the  tremendous  title  of  the 
Eye  of  Day.  If  you  cling  to  the  snobbish 
notion  that  common  people  are  prosaic,  ask  any 
common  person  for  the  local  names  of  the 
flowers,  names  which  vary  not  only  from 
county  to  county,  but  even  from  dale  to 
dale. 

But,  curiously  enough,  the  case  is  much 
stronger  than  this.  It  will  be  said  that  this 
poetry  is  peculiar  to  the  country  populace,  and 
that  the  dim  democracies  of  our  modern  towns 
at  least  have  lost  it.  For  some  extraordinary 
reason  they  have  not  lost  it.  Ordinary  London 
slang  is  full  of  witty  things  said  by  nobody  in 
particular.  True,  the  creed  of  our  cruel  cities 
is  not  so  sane  and  just  as  the  creed  of  the  old 
countryside;  but  the  people  are  just  as  clever 
77 


THE    RED    TOWN 

in  giving  names  to  their  sins  in  the  city  as  in 
giving  names  to  their  joys  in  the  wilderness. 
One  could  not  better  sum  up  Christianity  than 
by  calling  a  small  white  insignificant  flower 
"  The  Star  of  Bethlehem."  But  then,  again, 
one  could  not  better  sum  up  the  philos- 
ophy deduced  from  Darwinism  than  in  the 
one  verbal  picture  of  "  having  your  monkey 
up." 

Who  first  invented  these  violent  felicities  of 
language?  Who  first  spoke  of  a  man  "being 
off  his  head "  ?  The  obvious  comment  on  a 
lunatic  is  that  his  head  is  off  him ;  yet  the  other 
phrase  is  far  more  fantastically  exact.  There 
is  about  every  madman  a  singular  sensation 
that  his  body  has  walked  off  and  left  the  im- 
portant part  of  him  behind. 

But  the  cases  of  this  popular  perfection  in 
phrase  are  even  stronger  when  they  are  more 
vulgar.  What  concentrated  irony  and  imagina- 
tion there  is,  for  instance,  in  the  metaphor 
which  describes  a  man  doing  a  midnight  flitting 
as  "  shooting  the  moon  "  ?  It  expresses  every- 
78 


THE    RED   TOWN 

thing  about  the  runaway:  his  eccentric  occupa- 
tion, his  improbable  explanations,  his  furtive 
air  as  of  a  hunter,  his  constant  glances  at  the 
blank  clock  in  the  sky. 

No;  the  English  democracy  is  weak  enough 
about  a  number  of  things;  for  instance,  it  is 
very  weak  in  politics.  But  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  democracy  is  wonderfully  strong  in 
literature.  Very  few  books  that  the  cultured 
class  has  produced  of  late  have  been  such  good 
literature  as  the  expression  "  painting  the  town 
red." 

Oddly  enough,  this  last  Cockney  epigram 
clings  to  my  memory.  For  as  I  was  walking 
a  little  while  ago  round  a  corner  near  Victoria 
I  realised  for  the  first  time  that  a  familiar  lamp- 
post was  painted  all  over  with  a  bright  ver- 
milion, just  as  if  it  were  trying  (in  spite  of  ob- 
vious bodily  disqualifications)  to  pretend  that 
it  was  a  pillar-box.  I  have  since  heard  official 
explanations  of  these  startling  and  scarlet  ob- 
jects. But  my  first  fancy  was  that  some  dis- 
79 


THE   RED   TOWN 

sipated  gentleman  on  his  way  home  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  had  attempted  to  paint 
the  town  red  and  got  only  as  far  as  one  lamp- 
post. 

I  began  to  make  a  fairy  tale  about  the  man; 
and,  indeed,  this  phrase  contains  both  a  fairy 
tale  and  a  philosophy;  it  really  states  almost 
the  whole  truth  about  those  pure  outbreaks  of 
pagan  enjoyment  to  which  all  healthy  men  have 
often  been  tempted.  It  expresses  the  desire  to 
have  levity  on  a  large  scale  which  is  the  es- 
sence of  such  a  mood.  The  rowdy  young  man 
is  not  content  to  paint  his  tutor's  door  green : 
he  would  like  to  paint  the  whole  city  scarlet. 
The  word  which  to  us  best  recalls  such 
gigantesque  idiocy  is  the  word  "  mafficking." 
The  slaves  of  that  saturnalia  were  not  only 
painting  the  town  red;  they  thought  that  they 
were  painting  the  map  red — that  they  were 
painting  the  world  red.  But,  indeed,  this  Im- 
perial debauch  has  in  it  something  worse  than 
the  mere  larkiness  which  is  my  present  topic; 
it  has  an  element  of  real  self-flattery  and  of  sin. 
80 


THE   RED   TOWN 

The  Jingo  who  wants  to  admire  himself  is  worse 
than  the  blackguard  who  only  wants  to  enjoy 
himself.  In  a  very  old  ninth-century  illumina- 
tion which  I  have  seen,  depicting  the  war  of  the 
rebel  angels  in  heaven,  Satan  is  represented  as 
distributing  to  his  followers  peacock  feathers — 
the  symbols  of  an  evil  pride.  Satan  also  dis- 
tributed peacock  feathers  to  his  followers  on 
Mafeking  Night. 

But  taking  the  case  of  ordinary  pagan  reck- 
lessness and  pleasure  seeking,  it  is,  as  we  have 
said,  well  expressed  in  this  image.  First,  be- 
cause it  conveys  this  notion  of  filling  the  world 
with  one  private  folly ;  and  secondly,  because  of 
the  profound  idea  involved  in  the  choice  of 
colour.  Red  is  the  most  joyful  and  dreadful 
thing  in  the  physical  universe;  it  is  the  fiercest 
note,  it  is  the  highest  light,  it  is  the  place 
where  the  walls  of  this  world  of  ours  wear  thin- 
nest and  something  beyond  burns  through.  It 
glows  in  the  blood  which  sustains  and  in  the  fire 
which  destroys  us,  in  the  roses  of  our  romance 
81 


THE   RED   TOWN 

and  in  the  awful  cup  of  our  religion.  It  stands 
for  all  passionate  happiness,  as  in  faith  or  in 
first  love. 

Now,  the  profligate  is  he  who  wishes  to 
spread  this  crimson  of  conscious  joy  over  every- 
thing ;  to  have  excitement  at  every  moment ;  to 
paint  everything  red.  He  bursts  a  thousand 
barrels  of  wine  to  incarnadine  the  streets;  and 
sometimes  (in  his  last  madness)  he  will  butcher 
beasts  and  men  to  dip  his  gigantic  brushes  in 
their  blood.  For  it  marks  the  sacredness  of 
red  in  nature,  that  it  is  secret  even  when  it  is 
ubiquitous,  like  blood  in  the  human  body,  which 
is  omnipresent,  yet  invisible.  As  long  as  blood 
lives  it  is  hidden ;  it  is  only  dead  blood  that  we 
see.  But  the  earlier  parts  of  the  rake's  prog- 
ress are  very  natural  and  amusing.  Painting 
the  town  red  is  a  delightful  thing  until  it  is 
done.  It  would  be  splendid  to  see  the  cross  of 
St.  Paul's  as  red  as  the  cross  of  St.  George,  and 
the  gallons  of  red  paint  running  down  the  dome 
or  dripping  from  the  Nelson  Column.  But 
when  it  is  done,  when  you  have  painted  the  town 
82 


THE   RED    TOWN 

red,    an    extraordinary    thing    happens.     You 
cannot  see  any  red  at  all. 

I  can  see,  as  in  a  sort  of  vision,  the  successful 
artist  standing  in  the  midst  of  that  frightful 
city,  hung  on  all  sides  with  the  scarlet  of  his 
shame.  And  then,  when  everything  is  red,  he 
will  long  for  a  red  rose  in  a  green  hedge  and 
long  in  vain;  he  will  dream  of  a  red  leaf  and 
be  unable  even  to  imagine  it.  He  has  des- 
ecrated the  divine  colour,  and  he  can  no  longer 
see  it,  though  it  is  all  around.  I  see  him,  a 
single  black  figure  against  the  red-hot  hell  that 
he  has  kindled,  where  spires  and  turrets  stand 
up  like  immobile  flames :  he  is  stiffened  in  a  sort 
of  agony  of  prayer.  Then  the  mercy  of 
Heaven  is  loosened,  and  I  see  one  or  two  flakes 
of  snow  very  slowly  begin  to  fall. 


THE    FURROWS 

As  I  see  the  corn  grow  green  all  about  my  neigh- 
bourhood, there  rushes  on  me  for  no  reason  in 
particular  a  memory  of  the  winter.  I  say 
"  rushes,"  for  that  is  the  very  word  for  the  old 
sweeping  lines  of  the  ploughed  fields.  From 
some  accidental  turn  of  a  train- journey  or  a 
walking  tour,  I  saw  suddenly  the  fierce  rush  of 
the  furrows.  The  furrows  are  like  arrows; 
they  fly  along  an  arc  of  sky.  They  are  like 
leaping  animals;  they  vault  an  inviolable  hill 
and  roll  down  the  other  side.  They  are  like 
battering  battalions ;  they  rush  over  a  hill  with 
flying  squadrons  and  carry  it  with  a  cavalry 
charge.  They  have  all  the  air  of  Arabs  sweep- 
ing a  desert,  of  rockets  sweeping  the  sky,  of 
torrents  sweeping  a  watercourse.  Nothing  ever 
seemed  so  living  as  those  brown  lines  as  they 
shot  sheer  from  the  height  of  a  ridge  down  to 
their  still  whirl  of  the  valley.  They  were  swifter 
84 


THE   FURROWS 

than  arrows,  fiercer  than  Arabs,  more  riotous 
and  rejoicing  than  rockets.  And  yet  they  were 
only  thin  straight  lines  drawn  with  difficulty, 
like  a  diagram,  by  painful  and  patient  men. 
The  men  that  ploughed  tried  to  plough 
straight;  they  had  no  notion  of  giving  great 
sweeps  and  swirls  to  the  eye.  Those  cataracts 
of  cloven  earth ;  they  were  done  by  the  grace  of 
God.  I  had  always  rejoiced  in  them ;  but  I  had 
never  found  any  reason  for  my  joy.  There  are 
some  very  clever  people  who  cannot  enjoy  the 
joy  unless  they  understand  it.  There  are  other 
and  even  cleverer  people  who  say  that  they  lose 
the  joy  the  moment  they  do  understand  it. 
Thank  God  I  was  never  clever,  and  could  al- 
ways enjoy  things  when  I  understood  them  and 
when  I  didn't.  I  can  enjoy  the  orthodox  Tory, 
though  I  could  never  understand  him.  I  can 
also  enjoy  the  orthodox  Liberal,  though  I  un- 
derstand him  only  too  well. 

•  •  •  •  • 

But  the  splendour  of  furrowed  fields  is  this: 
that    like    all    brave    things    they    are    made 
86 


THE   FURROWS 

straight,  and  therefore  they  bend.  In  every- 
thing that  bows  gracefully  there  must  be  an  ef- 
fort at  stiffness.  Bows  are  beautiful  when  they 
bend  only  because  they  try  to  remain  rigid; 
and  sword-blades  can  curl  like  silver  ribbons 
only  because  they  are  certain  to  spring  straight 
again.  But  the  same  is  true  of  every  tough 
curve  of  the  tree-tunk,  of  every  strong-backed 
bend  of  the  bough;  there  is  hardly  any  such 
thing  in  Nature  as  a  mere  droop  of  weakness. 
Rigidity  yielding  a  little,  like  justice  swayed  by 
mercy,  is  the  whole  beauty  of  the  earth.  The 
cosmos  is  a  diagram  just  bent  beautifully  out 
of  shape.  Everything  tries  to  be  straight ;  and 
everything  just  fortunately  fails. 

The  foil  may  curve  in  the  lunge ;  but  there  is 
nothing  beautiful  about  beginning  the  battle 
with  a  crooked  foil.  So  the  strict  aim,  the 
strong  doctrine,  may  give  a  little  in  the  actual 
fight  with  facts;  but  that  is  no  reason  for  be- 
ginning with  a  weak  doctrine  or  a  twisted  aim. 
Do  not  be  an  opportunist;  try  to  be  theoretic 
at  aU  the  opportunities ;  fate  can  be  trusted  to 
86 


THE   FURROWS 

do  all  the  opportunist  part  of  it.  Do  not  try 
to  bend,  any  more  than  the  trees  try  to  bend. 
Try  to  grow  straight,  and  life  will  bend  you. 

Alas !  I  am  giving  the  moral  before  the  fable ; 
and  yet  I  hardly  think  that  otherwise  you  could 
see  all  that  I  mean  in  that  enormous  vision  of 
the  ploughed  hills.  These  great  furrowed 
slopes  are  the  oldest  architecture  of  man:  the 
oldest  astronomy  was  his  guide,  the  oldest 
botany  his  object.  And  for  geometry,  the  mere 
word  proves  my  case. 

But  when  I  looked  at  those  torrents  of 
ploughed  parallels,  that  great  rush  of  rigid 
lines,  I  seemed  to  see  the  whole  huge  achieve- 
ment of  democracy.  Here  was  mere  equality: 
but  equality  seen  in  bulk  is  more  superb  than 
any  supremacy.  Equality  free  and  flying, 
equality  rushing  over  hill  and  dale,  equality 
charging  the  world — that  was  the  meaning  of 
those  military  furrows,  military  in  their 
identity,  military  in  their  energy.  They  sculp- 
tured hill  and  dale  with  strong  curves  merely 
87 


THE    FURROWS 

because  they  did  not  mean  to  curve  at  all. 
They  made  the  strong  lines  of  landscape  with 
their  stiffly  driven  swords  of  the  soil.  It  is  not 
only  nonsense,  but  blasphemy,  to  say  that  man 
has  spoilt  the  country.  Man  has  created  the 
country;  it  was  his  business,  as  the  image  of 
God.  No  hill,  covered  with  common  scrub  or 
patches  of  purple  heath,  could  have  been  so 
sublimely  hilly  as  that  ridge  up  to  which  the 
ranked  furrows  rose  like  aspiring  angels.  No 
valley,  confused  with  needless  cottages  and 
towns,  can  have  been  so  utterly  valleyish  as 
that  abyss  into  which  the  down-rushing  furrows 
raged  like  demons  into  the  swirling  pit. 

It  is  the  hard  lines  of  discipline  and  equality 
that  mark  out  a  landscape  and  give  it  all  its 
mould  and  meaning.  It  is  just  because  the  lines 
of  the  furrow  are  ugly  and  even  that  the  land- 
scape is  living  and  superb.  As  I  think  I  have 
remarked  before,  the  Republic  is  founded  on 
the  plough. 


88 


^^ix.^'^L^X, 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    SIGHT- 
SEEING 

It  would  be  really  interesting  to  know  exactly 

why  an  intelligent  person — by  which  I  mean  a 

person    with    any    sort     of    intelligence — can 

and     does     dislike     sight-seeing.       Why     does 

the    idea    of    a    char-a-banc    full    of    tourists 

going    to    see    the    birthplace    of    Nelson    or 

the  death-scene  of  Simon  de  Montfort  strike 

a  strange  chill  to  the  soul?     I  can  tell  quite 

easily    what    this    dim    aversion    to    tourists 

and    their    antiquities   does    not    arise    from — 

at    least,    in    my    case,    i  Whatever    my    other 

I — 
vices    (and    they    are,    of    course,    of    a    lurid 

cast),    I    can    lay    my    hand    on    my    heart 

and  say  tha^  it  does  not  arise  from  a  paltry 

contempt  for  the  antiquities,  nor  yet  from  the 

still  more  paltry  contempt  for  the  tourists.    If 

there  is  one  thing  more  dwarfish  and  pitiful  than 

irreverence  for  the  past,  it  is  irreverence  for 

89 


SIGHT-SEEING 

the  present,  for  the  passionate  and  many-co)- 
oured  procession  of  life,  which  includes  the 
char-a-banc  among  its  many  chariots  and  tri- 
umphal cars.j  I  know  nothing  so  vulgar  as  that 
contempt  for  vulgarity  which  sneers  at  the 
clerks  on  a  Bank  Holiday  or  the  Cockneys  on 
Margate  sands.  The  man  who  notices  nothing 
about  the  clerk  except  his  Cockney  accent 
would  have  noticed  nothing  about  Simon  de 
Montfort  except  his  French  accent.  The  man 
who  jeers  at  Jones  for  having  dropped  an  "  h  " 
might  have  jeered  at  Nelson  for  having  dropped 
an  arm.  Scorn  springs  easily  to  the  essentially 
vulgar-minded;  and  it  is  as  easy  to  gibe  at 
Montfort  as  a  foreigner  or  at  Nelson  as  a  crip- 
ple, as  to  gibe  at  the  struggling  speech  and 
the  maimed  bodies  of  the  mass  of  our  comic 
and  tragic  race.  If  I  shrink  faintly  from 
this  affair  of  tourists  and  tombs,  it  is 
certainly  not  because  I  am  so  profane  as 
to  think  lightly  either  of  the  tombs  or  the 
tourists.  I  reverence  those  great  men  who 
had  the  courage  to  die;  I  reverence  also 
90 


SIGHT-SEEING 

these    little    men    who    have    the    courage    to 
live. 

Even  if  this  be  conceded,  another  suggestion 
may  be  made.  It  may  be  said  that  antiquities 
and  commonplace  crowds  are  indeed  good 
things,  like  violets  and  geraniums;  but  they  do 
not  go  together.  A  billycock  is  a  beautiful  ob- 
ject (it  may  be  eagerly  urged),  but  it  is  not 
in  the  same  style  of  architecture  as  Ely  Cathe- 
dral; it  is  a  dome,  a  small  rococo  dome  in  the 
Renaissance  manner,  and  does  not  go  with  the 
pointed  arches  that  assault  heaven  like  spears. 
A  char-a-banc  is  lovely  (it  may  be  said)  if 
placed  upon  a  pedestal  and  worshipped  for  its 
own  sweet  sake ;  but  it  does  not  harmonise  with 
the  curve  and  outline  of  the  old  three-decker 
on  which  Nelson  died ;  its  beauty  is  quite  of 
another  sort.  Therefore  (we  will  suppose  our 
sage  to  argue)  antiquity  and  democracy  shouldj 
be  kept  separate,  as  inconsistent  things.! 
Things  may  be  inconsistent  in  time  and  space  \ 
which  are  by  no  means  inconsistent  in  essential 
value  and  idea.  Thus  the  Catholic  Church  has 
91 


SIGHT-SEEING 

water  for  the  new-bom  and  oil  for  the  dying: 
but  she  never  mixes  oil  and  water. 

This  explanation  is  plausible;  but  I  do  not 
find  it  adequate.  The  first  objection  is  that  the 
same  smell  of  bathos  haunts  the  soul  in  the 
case  of  all  deliberate  and  elaborate  visits  to 
"  beauty  spots,"  even  by  persons  of  the  most 
elegant  position  or  the  most  protected  privacy. 
Specially  visiting  the  Coliseum  by  moonlight 
always  struck  me  as  being  as  vulgar  as  visiting 
it  by  limelight.  One  millionaire  standing  on 
the  top  of  Mont  Blanc,  one  millionaire  standing 
in  the  desert  by  the  Sphinx,  one  millionaire 
standing  in  the  middle  of  Stonehenge,  is  just 
as  comic  as  one  millionaire  is  anywhere  else ;  and 
that  is  saying  a  good  deal.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  the  billycock  had  come  privately  and  natur- 
ally into  Ely  Cathedral,  no  enthusiast  for 
Gothic  harmony  would  think  of  objecting  to 
the  billycock — so  long,  of  course,  as  it  was  not 
worn  on  the  head.  But  there  is  indeed  a  much 
deeper  objection  to  this  theory  of  the  two  in- 
compatible excellences  of  antiquity  and  pop- 
92 


SIGHT-SEEING 

ularity.  For  the  truth  is  that  it  has  been  al- 
most entirely  the  antiquities  that  have  normally 
interested  the  populace ;  and  it  has  been  almost 
entirely  the  populace  who  have  systematically 
preserved  the  antiquities.  The  Oldest  Inhab- 
itant has  always  been  a  clodhopper;  I  have 
never  heard  of  his  being  a  gentleman.  It  is 
the  peasants  who  preserve  all  traditions  of  the 
sites  of  battles  or  the  building  of  churches.  It 
is  they  who  remember,  so  far  as  any  one  remem- 
bers, the  glimpses  of  fairies  or  the  graver  won- 
ders of  saints.  In  the  classes  above  them  the 
supernatural  has  been  slain  by  the  supercilious. 
That  is  a  true  and  tremendous  text  in  Scrip- 
ture which  says  that  "  where  there  is  no  vision 
the  people  perish."  But  it  is  equally  true  in 
practice  that  where  there  is  no  people  the 
visions  perish. 

The  idea  must  be  abandoned,  then,  that  this 
feeling  of  faint  dislike  towards  popular  sight- 
seeing is  due  to  any  inherent  incompatibility 
between  the  idea  of  special  shrines  and  trophies 
and  the  idea  of  large  masses  of  ordinary  men. 
93 


SIGHT-SEEING 

On  the  contrary,  these  two  elements  of  sanctity 
and  democracy  have  been  specially  connected 
and  allied  throughout  history.  The  shrines 
and  trophies  were  often  put  up  by  ordinary 
men.  They  were  always  put  up  for  ordinary 
men.  .^To  whatever  things  the  fastidious  mod- 
ern artist  may  choose  to  apply  his  theory  of 
specialist  judgment,  and  an  aristocracy  of 
taste,  he  must  necessarily  find  it  difficult  really 
to  apply  it  to  such  historic  and  monumental  art. 
Obviously,  a  public  building  is  meant  to  im- 
press the  public.  The  most  aristocratic  tomb 
is  a  democratic  tomb,  because  it  exists  to  be 
seen;  the  only  aristocratic  thing  is  the  decay- 
ing corpse,  not  the  undecaying  marble;  and  if 
the  man  wanted  to  be  thoroughly  aristocratic, 
he  should  be  buried  in  his  own  back-garden. 
)The  chapel  of  the  most  narrow  and  exclusive 
sect  is  universal  outside,  even  if  it  is  limited 
inside ;  its  walls  and  windows  confront  all  points 
of  the  compass  and  all  quarters  of  the  cosmos. 
It  may  be  small  as  a  dwelling-place,  but  it  is 
universal  as  a  monument;  if  its  sectarians  had 
94 


SIGHT-SEEING 

really  wished  to  be  private  they  should  have 
met  in  a  private  house.  /Whenever  and  wher- 
ever we  erect  a  national  or  municipal  hall, 
pillar,  or  statue,  we  are  speaking  to  the  crowd 
like  a  demagogue. 

The  statue  of  every  statesman  offers  Itself  for 
election  as  much  as  the  statesman  himself. 
Every  epitaph  on  a  church  slab  is  put  up  for 
the  mob  as  much  as  a  placard  in  a  General 
Election.  And  if  we  follow  this  track  of  re- 
flection we  shall,  I  think,  really  find  why  it  is 
that  modern  sight-seeing  jars  on  something  in 
us,  something  that  is  not  a  caddish  contempt 
for  graves  nor  an  equally  caddish  contempt  for 
cads.  For,  after  all,  there  is  many  a  church- 
yard which  consists  mostly  of  dead  cads;  but 
that  does  not  make  it  less  sacred  or  less 
sad. 

The  real  explanation,  I  fancy,  is  this:  that 
these  cathedrals  and  columns  of  triumph  were 
meant,  not  for  people  more  cultured  and  self- 
conscious  than  modern  tourists,  but  for  people 
much  rougher  and  more  casual.  Those  heaps 
96 


SIGHT-SEEING 

of  live  stone  like  frozen  fountains,  were  so 
placed  and  poised  as  to  catch  the  eye  of 
ordinary  inconsiderate  men  going  about  their 
daily  business;  and  when  they  are  SQ_jSeen  they 
are  never  forgotten.  The  true  way  of  reviving 
the  magic  of  our  great  minsters  and  historic 
sepulchres  is  not  the  one  which  Ruskin  was  al- 
ways recommending.  It  is  not  to  be  more  care- 
ful of  historic  buildings.  Nay,  it  is  rather  to 
be  more  careless  of  them.  Buy  a  bicycle  in 
Maidstone  to  visit  an  aunt  in  Dover,  and  you 
will  see  Canterbury  Cathedral  as  it  was  built 
to  be  seen.  Go  through  London  only  as  the 
shortest  way  between  Croydon  and  Hampstead, 
and  the  Nelson  Column  will  (for  the  first  time 
in  your  life)  remind  you  of  Nelson.  You  will 
appreciate  Hereford  Cathedral  if  you  have  come 
for  cider,  not  if  you  have  come  for  architecture. 
You  will  really  see  the  Place  Vendome  if  you 
have  come  on  business,  not  if  you  have  come 
for  art.  For  it  was  for  the  simple  and  labori- 
ous generations  of  men,  practical,  troubled 
about  many  things,  that  our  fathers  reared 
96 


SIGHT-SEEING 

those  portents.  There  is,  indeed,  another  ele- 
ment, not  unimportant:  the  fact  that  people 
have  gone  to  cathedrals  to  pray.  But  in  dis- 
cussing modem  artistic  cathedral-lovers,  we 
need  not  consider  this. 


97 


A    CRIMINAL    HEAD 

When  men  of  science  (or,  more  often,  men  who 
talk  about  science)  speak  of  studying  history 
or  human  society  scientifically  they  always  for- 
get that  there  are  two  quite  distinct  questions 
involved.  It  may  be  that  certain  facts  of  the 
body  go  with  certain  facts  of  the  soul,  but  it  by 
no  means  follows  that  a  grasp  of  such  facts 
of  the  body  goes  with  a  grasp  of  the  things  of 
the  soul.  A  man  may  show  very  learnedly  that 
certain  mixtures  of  race  make  a  happy  com- 
munity, but  he  may  be  quite  wrong  (he  gener- 
ally is)  about  what  communities  are  happy.  A 
man  may  explain  scientifically  how  a  certain 
physical  type  involves  a  really  bad  man,  but  he 
may  be  quite  wrong  (he  generally  is)  about 
which  sort  of  man  is  really  bad.  Thus  his 
whole  argument  is  useless,  for  he  understands 
only  one  half  of  the  equation. 

The  drearier  kind  of  don  may  come  to  me  and 
98 


A   CRIMINAL   HEAD 

say,  "  Celts  are  unsuccessful ;  look  at  Irishmen, 
for  instance."  To  which  I  should  reply,  "  You 
may  know  all  about  Celts ;  but  it  is  obvious  that 
you  know  nothing  about  Irishmen.  The  Irish 
are  not  in  the  least  unsuccessful,  unless  it  is  un- 
successful to  wander  from  their  own  country 
over  a  great  part  of  the  earth,  in  which  case 
the  English  are  unsuccessful  too."  A  man  with 
a  bumpy  head  may  say  to  me  ( as  a  kind  of  New 
Year  greeting) ,  "  Fools  have  microcephalous 
skulls,"  or  what  not.  To  which  I  shall  reply, 
"  In  order  to  be  certain  of  that,  you  must  be 
a  good  judge  both  of  the  physical  and  of  the 
mental  fact.  It  is  not  enough  that  you  should 
know  a  microcephalous  skull  when  you  see  it. 
It  is  also  necessary  that  you  should  know  a 
fool  when  you  see  him ;  and  I  have  a  suspicion 
that  you  do  not  know  a  fool  when  you  see  him, 
even  after  the  most  lifelong  and  intimate  of  all 
forms  of  acquaintanceship." 

The  trouble  with  most  sociologists,  criminolo- 
gists, etc.,  is  that  while  their  knowledge  of  their 
own  details  is  exhaustive  and  subtle,  their  knowl- 
99 


A   CRIMINAL   HEAD 

edge  of  man  and  society,  to  which  these  are  to 
be  applied,  is  quite  exceptionally  superficial  and 
silly.  They  know  everything  about  biology,  but 
almost  nothing  about  life.  Their  ideas  of  his- 
tory, for  instance,  are  simply  cheap  and  un- 
educated. Thus  some  famous  and  foolish  pro- 
fessor measured  the  skull  of  Charlotte  Corday 
to  ascertain  the  criminal  type;  he  had  not  his- 
torical knowledge  enough  to  know  that  if  there 
is  any  "  criminal  type,"  certainly  Charlotte 
Corday  had  not  got  it.  The  skull,  I  believe, 
afterwards  turned  out  not  to  be  Charlotte  Cor- 
day's  at  all;  but  that  is  another  story.  The 
point  is  that  the  poor  old  man  was  trying  to 
match  Charlotte  Corday's  mind  with  her  skull 
without  knowing  anything  whatever  about  her 
mind. 

But  I  came  yesterday  upon  a  yet  more  crude 
and  startling  example. 

In  a  popular  magazine  there  is  one  of  the 

usual  articles  about  criminology ;  about  whether 

wicked  men  could  be  made  good  if  their  heads 

were  taken  to  pieces.     As  by  far  the  wickedest 

100 


A   CRIMINAL   HEAD 

men  I  know  of  are  much  too  rich  and  powerful 
ever  to  submit  to  the  process,  the  speculation 
leaves  me  cold.  I  always  notice  with  pain,  how- 
ever, a  curious  absence  of  the  portraits  of  living 
millionaires  from  such  galleries  of  awful  ex- 
amples; most  of  the  portraits  in  which  we  are 
called  upon  to  remark  the  line  of  the  nose  or 
the  curve  of  the  forehead  appear  to  be  the  por- 
traits of  ordinary  sad  men,  who  stole  because 
they  were  hungry  or  killed  because  they  were  in 
a  rage.  The  physical  peculiarity  seems  to  vary 
infinitely ;  sometimes  it  is  the  remarkable  square 
head,  sometimes  it  is  the  unmistakable  round 
head;  sometimes  the  learned  draw  attention  to 
the  abnormal  development,  sometimes  to  the 
striking  deficiency  of  the  back  of  the  head.  I 
have  tried  to  discover  what  is  the  invariable 
factor,  the  one  permanent  mark  of  the  scientific 
criminal  type;  after  exhaustive  classification  I 
have  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  consists  in 
being  poor. 

But  it  was  among  the  pictures  in  this  article 
that  I  received  the  final  shock;  the  enlighten- 
101 


A.  CRIMINAL   HEAD 

ment  which  has  left  me  in  lasting  possession  of 
the  fact  that  criminologists  are  generally  more 
Ignorant  than  criminals.  Among  the  starved 
and  bitter,  but  quite  human,  faces  was  one  head, 
neat  but  old-fashioned,  with  the  powder  of  the 
18th  century  and  a  certain  almost  pert  prim- 
ness in  the  dress  which  marked  the  conventions 
of  the  upper  middle-class  about  1790.  The  face 
was  lean  and  lifted  stiffly  up,  the  eyes  stared  for- 
ward with  a  frightful  sincerity,  the  lip  was  firm 
with  a  heroic  firmness ;  all  the  more  pathetic  be- 
cause of  a  certain  delicacy  and  deficiency  of 
male  force.  Without  knowing  who  it  was,  one 
could  have  guessed  that  it  was  a  man  in  the 
manner  of  Shakespeare's  Brutus,  a  man  of 
piercingly  pure  intentions,  prone  to  use  gov- 
ernment as  a  mere  machine  for  morality,  very 
sensitive  to  the  charge  of  inconsistency  and  a 
little  too  proud  of  his  own  clean  and  honourable 
life.  I  say  I  should  have  known  this  almost 
from  the  face  alone,  even  if  I  had  not  known 
who  it  was. 

But    I    did    know    who    it    was.     It    was 
102 


A   CRIMINAL   HEAD 

Robespierre.  And  underneath  the  portrait  of 
this  pale  and  too  eager  moralist  were  written 
these  remarkable  words :  "  Deficiency  of  ethical 
instincts,"  followed  by  something  to  the  effect 
that  he  knew  no  mercy  (which  is  certainly  un- 
true), and  by  some  nonsense  about  a  retreat- 
ing forehead,  a  peculiarity  which  he  shared  with 
Louis  XVI  and  with  half  the  people  of  his  time 
and  ours. 

Then  it  was  that  I  measured  the  staggering 
distance  between  the  knowledge  and  the  igno- 
rance of  science.  Then  I  knew  that  all  crim- 
inology might  be  worse  than  worthless,  because 
of  its  utter  ignorance  of  that  human  material 
of  which  it  is  supposed  to  be  speaking.  The 
man  who  could  say  that  Robespierre  was  defi- 
cient in  ethical  instincts  is  a  man  utterly  to  be 
disregarded  in  all  calculations  of  ethics.  He 
might  as  well  say  that  John  Bunyan  was  defi- 
cient in  ethical  instincts.  You  may  say  that 
Robespierre  was  morbid  and  unbalanced,  and 
you  may  say  the  same  of  Bunyan.  But  if  these 
two  men  were  morbid  and  unbalanced  they  were 
103 


A   CRIMINAL   HEAD 

morbid  and  unbalanced  by  feeling  too  much 
about  morality,  not  by  feeling  too  little.  You 
may  say  if  you  like  that  Robespierre  was  (in 
a  negative  sort  of  way)  mad.  But  if  he  was 
mad  he  was  mad  on  ethics.  He  and  a  com- 
pany of  keen  and  pugnacious  men,  intellectually 
impatient  of  unreason  and  wrong,  resolved  that 
Europe  should  not  be  choked  up  in  every  chan- 
nel by  oligarchies  and  state  secrets  that  already 
stank.  The  work  was  the  greatest  that  was 
ever  given  to  men  to  do  except  that  which  Chris- 
tianity did  in  dragging  Europe  out  of  the  abyss 
of  barbarism  after  the  Dark  Ages.  But  they 
did  it,  and  no  one  else  could  have  done  it. 

Certainly  we  could  not  do  it.  We  are  not 
ready  to  fight  all  Europe  on  a  point  of  justice. 
We  are  not  ready  to  fling  our  most  powerful 
class  as  mqre  refuse  to  the  foreigner ;  we  are  not 
ready  to  shatter  the  great  estates  at  a  stroke; 
we  are  not  ready  to  trust  ourselves  in  an  awful 
moment  of  utter  dissolution  in  order  to  make 
all  things  seem  intelligible  and  all  men  feel  hon- 
ourable henceforth.  We  are  not  strong  enough 
104 


A    CRIMINAL   HEAD 

to  be  as  strong  as  Danton.  We  are  not  strong 
enough  to  be  as  weak  as  Robespierre.  There 
is  only  one  thing,  it  seems,  that  we  can  do.  Like 
a  mob  of  children,  we  can  play  games  upon 
this  ancient  battlefield ;  we  can  pull  up  the  bones 
and  skulls  of  the  tyrants  and  martyrs  of  that 
unimaginable  war;  and  we  can  chatter  to  each 
other  childishly  and  innocently  about  skulls  that 
are  imbecile  and  heads  that  are  criminal. 

I  do  not  know  whose  heads  are  criminal,  but 
I  think  I  know  whose  are  imbecile. 


\^' 


10$ 


THE    WRATH    OF    THE    ROSES 

The  position  of  the  rose  among  flowers  is  like 
that  of  the  dog  among  animals.  It  is  not  so 
much  that  both  are  domesticated  as  that  we 
have  some  dim  feeling  that  they  were  always 
domesticated.  There  are  wild  roses  and  there 
are  wild  dogs.  I  do  not  know  the  wild  dogs; 
the  wild  roses  are  very  nice.  But  nobody  ever 
thinks  of  either  of  them  if  the  name  is  abruptly 
mentioned  in  a  gossip  or  a  poem.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  are  tame  tigers  and  tame  cobras, 
but  if  one  says,  "  I  have  a  cobra  in  my  pocket,'^ 
or  "  There  is  a  tiger  in  the  music-room,"  the 
adjective  "  tame  "  has  to  be  somewhat  hastily 
added.  If  one  speaks  of  beasts  one  thinks  first 
of  wild  beasts;  if  of  flowers  one  thinks  first  of 
wild  flowers. 

But  there  are  two  great  exceptions  caught  so 
completely  into  the  wheel  of  man's  civilisation, 
entangled  so  unalterably  with  his  ancient  emo- 
106 


THE   WRATH   OF   THE    ROSES 

tions  and  images,  that  the  artificial  product 
seems  more  natural  than  the  natural.  The  dog 
is  not  a  part  of  natural  history,  but  of  human 
history;  and  the  real  rose  grows  in  a  gar- 
den. All  must  regard  the  elephant  as  some- 
thing tremendous,  but  tamed;  and  many, 
especially  in  our  great  cultured  centres,  re- 
gard every  bull  as  presumably  a  mad  bull. 
In  the  same  way  we  think  of  most  garden 
trees  and  plants  as  fierce  creatures  of  the  for- 
est or  morass  taught  at  last  to  endure  the 
curb. 

But  with  the  dog  and  the  rose  this  instinctive 
principle  is  reversed.  With  them  we  think  of  the 
artificial  as  the  archetype;  the  earth-bom  as 
the  erratic  exception.  We  think  vaguely  of  the 
wild  dog  as  if  he  had  run  away,  like  the  stray 
cat.  And  we  cannot  help  fancying  that  the 
wonderful  wild  rose  of  our  hedges  has  escaped 
by  jumping  over  the  hedge.  Perhaps  they  fled 
together,  the  dog  and  the  rose:  a  singular  and 
(on  the  whole)  an  imprudent  elopement.  Per- 
haps the  treacherous  dog  crept  from  the  ken- 
107 


THE   WRATH   OF   THE    ROSES 

nel,  and  the  rebellious  rose  from  the  flower-bed, 
and  they  fought  their  way  out  in  company,  one 
with  teeth  and  the  other  with  thorns.  Possibly 
this  is  why  my  dog  becomes  a  wild  dog  when-  he 
sees  roses,  and  kicks  them  anywhere.  Possibly 
this  is  why  the  wild  rose  is  called  a  dog-rose. 
Possibly  not. 

But  there  is  this  degree  of  dim  barbaric  truth 
in  the  quaint  old-world  legend  that  I  have  just 
invented.  That  in  these  two  cases  the  civilised 
product  is  felt  to  be  the  fiercer,  nay,  even  the 
wilder.  Nobody  seems  to  be  afraid  of  a  wild 
dog:  he  is  classed  among  the  jackals  and  the 
servile  beasts.  The  terrible  cave  canem  is  writ- 
ten over  man's  creation.  When  we  read  "  Be- 
ware of  the  Dog,"  it  means  beware  of  the  tame 
dog:  for  it  is  the  tame  dog  that  is  terrible. 
He  is  terrible  in  proportion  as  he  is  tame:  it  is 
his  loyalty  and  his  virtues  that  are  awful  to  the 
stranger,  even  the  stranger  within  your  gates; 
still  more  to-  the  stranger  halfway  over  your 
gates.  He  is  alarmed  at  such  deafening  and 
108 


THE   WRATH   OF  THE   ROSES 

furious  docility ;  he  flees  from  that  great  monster 
of  mildness. 

Well,  I  have  much  the  same  feeling  when  I 
look  at  the  roses  ranked  red  and  thick  and 
resolute  round  a  garden ;  they  seem  to  me  bold 
and  even  blustering.  I  hasten  to  say  that  I 
know  even  less  about  my  own  garden  than  about 
anybody  else's  garden.  I  know  nothing  about 
roses,  not  even  their  names.  I  know  only  the 
name  Rose;  and  Rose  is  (in  every  sense  of  the 
word)  a  Christian  name.  It  is  Christian  in 
the  one  absolute  and  primordial  sense  of  Chris- 
tian— that  it  comes  down  from  the  age  of 
pagans.  The  rose  can  be  seen,  and  even  smelt, 
in  Greek,  Latin,  Proven9al,  Gothic,  Renascence, 
and  Puritan  poems.  Beyond  this  mere  word 
Rose,  which  (like  wine  and  other  noble  words) 
is  the  same  in  all  the  tongues  of  white  men,  I 
know  literally  nothing.  I  have  heard  the  more 
evident  and  advertised  names.  I  know  there  is 
a  flower  which  calls  itself  the  Glory  of  Dijon — 
which  I  had  supposed  to  be  its  cathedral.  In 
any  case,  to  have  produced  a  rose  and  a  cathe- 
109 


THE   WRATH   OF   THE    ROSES 

dral  is  to  have  produced  not  only  two  very 
glorious  and  humane  things,  but  also  (as  I  main- 
tain) two  very  soldierly  and  defiant  things.  I 
also  know  there  is  a  rose  called  Marechal  Niel — 
note  once  more  the  military  ring. 

And  when  I  was  walking  round  my  garden  the 
other  day  I  spoke  to  my  gardener  ( an  enterprise 
of  no  little  valour)  and  asked  him  the  name  of  a 
strange  dark  rose  that  had  somehow  oddly  taken 
my  fancy.  It  was  almost  as  if  it  reminded  me 
of  some  turbid  element  in  history  and  the  soul. 
Its  red  was  not  only  swarthy,  but  smoky ;  there 
was  something  congested  and  wrathful  about  its 
colour.  It  was  at  once  theatrical  and  sulky. 
The  gardener  told  me  it  was  called  Victor 
Hugo. 

Therefore  it  is  that  I  feel  all  roses  to  have 
some  secret  power  about  them ;  even  their  names 
may  mean  something  in  connection  with  them- 
selves, in  which  they  differ  from  nearly  all  the 
sons  of  men.  But  the  rose  itself  is  royal  and 
dangerous;  long  as  it  has  remained  in  the  rich 
110 


THE   WRATH  OF  THE   ROSES 

house  of  civilisation,  it  has  never  laid  off  its 
armour.  A  rose  always  looks  like  a  mediasval 
gentleman  of  Italy,  with  a  cloak  of  crimson 
and  a  sword:  for  the  thorn  is  the  sword  of  the 
rose. 

And  there  is  this  real  moral  in  the  matter; 
that  we  have  to  remember  that  civilisation  as 
it  goes  on  ought  not  perhaps  to  grow  more 
fighting — ^but  ought  to  grow  more  ready  to 
fight.  The  more  valuable  and  reposeful  is  the 
order  we  have  to  guard,  the  more  vivid  should 
be  our  ultimate  sense  of  vigilance  and  potential 
violence.  And  when  I  walk  round  a  summer 
garden,  I  can  understand  how  those  high  mad 
lords  at  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages,  just  before 
their  swords  clashed,  caught  at  roses  for  their  in- 
stinctive emblems  of  empire  and  rivalry.  For 
to  me  any  such  garden  is  full  of  the  wars  of  the 
roses. 


Ill 


THE    GOLD    OF    GLASTONBURY 

One  silver  morning  I  walked  into  a  small  grey 
town  of  stone,  like  twenty  other  grey  western 
towns,  which  happened  to  be  called  Glaston- 
bury; and  saw  the  magic  thorn  of  near  two 
thousand  years  growing  in  the  open  air  as 
casually  as  any  bush  in  my  garden. 

In  Glastonbury,  as  in  all  noble  and  humane 
things,  the  myth  is  more  important  than  the 
history.  One  cannot  say  anything  stronger  of 
the  strange  old  tale  of  St.  Joseph  and  the  Thorn 
than  that  it  dwarfs  St.  Dunstan.  Standing 
among  the  actual  stones  and  shrubs  one  thinks 
of  the  first  century  and  not  of  the  tenth;  one's 
mind  goes  back  beyond  the  Saxons  and  beyond 
the  greatest  statesman  of  the  Dark  Ages.  The 
tale  that  Joseph  of  Arimathea  came  to  Britain 
is  presumably  a  mere  legend.  But  it  is  not  by 
any  means  so  incredible  or  preposterous  a  legend 
as  many  modem  people  suppose.  The  popular 
112 


THE   GOLD    OF   GLASTONBURY 

notion  is  that  the  thing  is  quite  comic  and  incon- 
ceivable ;  as  if  one  said  that  Wat  Tyler  went 
to  Chicago,  or  that  John  Bunyan  discovered 
the  North  Pole.  We  think  of  Palestine,  as  lit- 
tle, localised  and  very  private,  of  Christ's  fol- 
lowers as  poor  folk,  astricti  glebis,  rooted  to 
their  towns  or  trades;  and  we  think  of  vast 
routes  of  travel  and  constant  world-communica- 
tions as  things  of  recent  and  scientific  origin. 
But  this  is  wrong ;  at  least,  the  last  part  of  it  is. 
It  is  part  of  that  large  and  placid  lie  that  the 
rationalists  tell  when  they  say  that  Christianity 
arose  in  ignorance  and  barbarism.  Christianity 
arose  in  the  thick  of  a  brilliant  and  bustling 
cosmopolitan  civilisation.  Long  sea-voyages 
were  not  so  quick,  but  were  quite  as  incessant 
as  to-day;  and  though  in  the  nature  of  things 
Christ  had  not  many  rich  followers,  it  is  not 
unnatural  to  suppose  that  He  had  some.  And 
a  Joseph  of  Arimathea  may  easily  have  been  a 
Roman  citizen  with  a  yacht  that  could  visit 
Britain.  The  same  fallacy  is  employed  with  the 
same  partisan  motive  in  the  case  of  the  Gospel 
113 


THE   GOLD   OF   GLASTONBURY 

of  St.  John;  which  critics  say  could  not  have 
been  written  by  one  of  the  first  few  Christians 
because  of  its  Greek  transcendentalism  and  its 
Platonic  tone.  I  am  no  judge  of  the  philology, 
but  every  human  being  is  a  divinely  appointed 
judge  of  the  philosophy:  and  the  Platonic  tone 
seems  to  me  to  prove  nothing  at  all.  Palestine 
was  not  a  secluded  valley  of  barbarians ;  it  was 
an  open  province  of  a  polyglot  empire,  overrun 
with  all  sorts  of  people  of  all  kinds  of  educa- 
tion. To  take  a  rough  parallel:  suppose  some 
great  prophet  arose  among  the  Boers  in  South 
Africa.  The  prophet  himself  might  be  a  simple 
or  unlettered  man.  But  no  one  who  knows  the 
modem  world  would  be  surprised  if  one  of  his 
closest  followers  were  a  Professor  from  Heidel- 
berg or  an  M.A.  from  Oxford. 

All  this  is  not  urged  here  with  any  notion  of 
proving  that  the  tale  of  the  thorn  is  not  a  myth. 
As  I  have  said,  it  probably  is  a  myth.  It  is 
urged  with  the  much  more  important  object  of 
pointing  out  the  proper  attitude  towards  such 
myths.  The  proper  attitude  is  one  of  doubt 
114} 


THE   GOLD    OF   GLASTONBURY 

and  hope  and  of  a  kind  of  light  mystery.  The 
tale  IS  certainly  not  impossible ;  as  it  is  certainly 
not  certain.  And  through  all  the  ages  since  the 
Roman  Empire  men  have  fed  their  healthy 
fancies  and  their  historical  imagination  upon  the 
very  twilight  condition  of  such  tales.  But  to- 
day real  agnosticism  has  declined  along  with 
real  theology.  People  cannot  leave  a  creed  alone ; 
though  it  is  the  essence  of  a  creed  to  be  clear. 
But  neither  can  they  leave  a  legend  alone; 
though  it  is  the  essence  of  a  legend  to  be  vague. 
That  sane  half  scepticism  which  was  found  in 
all  rustics,  in  all  ghost  tales  and  fairy  tales, 
seems  to  be  a  lost  secret.  Modem  people  must 
make  scientifically  certain  that  St.  Joseph  did 
or  did  not  go  to  Glastonbury,  despite  the  fact 
that  it  is  now  quite  impossible  to  find  out;  and 
that  it  does  not,  in  a  religious  sense,  very  much 
matter.  But  it  is  essential  to  feel  that  he  may 
have  gone  to  Glastonbury:  all  songs,  arts,  and 
dedications  branching  and  blossoming  like  the 
thorn,  are  rooted  in  some  such  sacred  doubt. 
Taken  thus,  not  heavily  like  a  problem  but 
115 


THE   GOLD    OF   GLASTONBURY 

lightly  like  an  old  tale,  the  thing  does  lead  one 
along  the  road  of  very  strange  realities,  and  the 
thorn  is  found  growing  in  the  heart  of  a  very 
secret  maze  of  the  soul.  Something  is  really 
present  in  the  place;  some  closer  contact  with 
the  thing  which  covers  Europe  but  is  still  a 
secret.  Somehow  the  grey  town  and  the  green 
bush  touch  across  the  world  the  strange  small 
country  of  the  garden  and  the  grave;  there  is 
verily  some  communion  between  the  thorn  tree 
and  the  crown  of  thorns. 

A  man  never  knows  what  tiny  thing  will  startle 
him  to  such  ancestral  and  impersonal  tears. 
Piles  of  superb  masonry  will  often  pass  like  a 
common  panorama;  and  on  this  grey  and  silver 
morning  the  ruined  towers  of  the  cathedral  stood 
about  me  somewhat  vaguely  like  grey  clouds. 
But  down  in  a  hollow  where  the  local  antiquaries 
are  making  a  fruitful  excavation,  a  magnificent 
old  ruffian  with  a  pickaxe  (whom  I  believe  to 
have  been  St.  Joseph  of  Arimathea)  showed  me 
a  fragment  of  the  old  vaulted  roof  which  he  had 
found  in  the  earth;  and  on  the  whitish  grey 

116 


THE    GOLD    OF   GLASTONBURY 

stone  there  was  just  a  faint  brush  of  gold. 
There  seemed  a  piercing  and  swordUke  pathos, 
an  unexpected  fragrance  of  all  forgotten  or 
desecrated  things,  in  the  bare  survival  of  that 
poor  little  pigment  upon  the  imperishable  rock. 
To  the  strong  shapes  of  the  Roman  and  the 
Gothic  I  had  grown  accustomed ;  but  that  weak 
touch  of  colour  was  at  once  tawdry  and  tender, 
like  some  popular  keepsake.  Then  I  knew  that 
all  my  fathers  were  men  like  me ;  for  the  columns 
and  arches  were  grave,  and  told  of  the  gravity 
of  the  builders ;  but  here  was  one  touch  of  their 
gaiety.  I  almost  expected  it  to  fade  from  the 
stone  as  I  stared.  It  was  as  if  men  had  been 
able  to  preserve  a  fragment  of  a  sunset. 

And  then  I  remembered  how  the  artistic  critics 
have  always  praised  the  grave  tints  and  the  grim 
shadows  of  the  crumbling  cloisters  and  abbey 
towers,  and  how  they  themselves  often  dress  up 
like  Gothic  ruins  in  the  sombre  tones  of  dim  grey 
walls  or  dark  green  ivy.  I  remembered  how 
they  hated  almost  all  primary  things,  but  espe- 
cially primary  colours.     I  knew  they  were  ap- 

117 


THE   GOLD   OF   GLASTONBURY 

predating  much  more  delicately  and  truly  than 
I  the  sublime  skeleton  and  the  mighty  fungoids 
of  the  dead  Glastonbury.  But  I  stood  for  an 
instant  alive  in  the  living  Glastonbury,  gay  with 
gold  and  coloured  like  the  toy-book  of  a  child. 


118 


THE    FUTURISTS 

It  was  a  warm  golden  evening,  fit  for  October, 
and  I  was  watching  (with  regret)  a  lot  of  little 
black  pigs  being  turned  out  of  my  garden,  when 
the  postman  handed  to  me,  with  a  perfunctory 
haste  which  doubtless  masked  his  emotion,  the 
Declaration  of  Futurism.  If  you  ask  me  what 
Futurism  is,  I  cannot  tell  you;  even  the  Futu- 
rists themselves  seem  a  little  doubtful;  perhaps 
they  are  waiting  for  the  future  to  find  out.  But 
if  you  ask  me  what  its  Declaration  is,  I  answer 
eagerly ;  for  I  can  tell  you  quite  a  lot  about  that. 
It  is  written  by  an  Italian  named  Marinetti, 
in  a  magazine  which  is  called  Poesia,  It  is 
headed  "  Declaration  of  Futurism  "  in  enormous 
letters ;  it  is  divided  off^  with  little  numbers ;  and 
it  starts  straight  away  like  this:  "  1.  We  intend 
to  glorify  the  love  of  danger,  the  custom  of 
energy,  the  strengt  of  daring.  ^.  The  es- 
sential elements  of  our  poetry  will  be  courage, 
119 


THE   FUTURISTS 

audacity,  and  revolt.  3.  Literature  having  up 
to  now  glorified  thoughtful  immobility,  ecstasy, 
and  slumber,  we  wish  to  exalt  the  aggressive 
movement,  the  feverish  insomnia,  running,  the 
perilous  leap,  the  cufF  and  the  blow."  While 
I  am  quite  willing  to  exalt  the  cuff  within  rea- 
son, it  scarcely  seems  such  an  entirely  new  sub- 
ject for  literature  as  the  Futurists  imagine.  It 
seems  to  me  that  even  through  the  slumber  which 
fills  the  Siege  of  Troy,  the  Song  of  Roland,  and 
the  Orlando  Furioso,  and  in  spite  of  the  thought- 
ful immobility  which  marks  "  Pantagruel," 
"  Henry  V,"  and  the  Ballad  of  Chevy  Chase, 
there  are  occasional  gleams  of  an  admiration 
for  courage,  a  readiness  to  glorify  the  love  of 
danger,  and  even  the  "  strengt  of  daring,"  I 
seem  to  remember,  slightly  difl*erently  spelt, 
somewhere  in  literature. 

The  distinction,  however,  seems  to  be  that  the 

warriors  of  the  past  went  in  for  tournaments, 

which  were  at  least  dangerous  for  themselves, 

while  the  Futurists  go  in  for  motor-cars,  which 

120 


THE   FUTURISTS 

are  mainly  alarming  for  other  people.  It  is  the 
Futurist  in  his  motor  who  does  the  "  aggressive 
movement,"  but  it  is  the  pedestrians  who  go  in 
for  the  "  running "  and  the  "  perilous  leap." 
Section  No.  4  says,  "  We  declare  that  the  splen- 
dour of  the  world  has  been  enriched  with  a  new 
form  of  beauty,  the  beauty  of  speed.  A  race- 
automobile  adorned  with  great  pipes  like 
serpents  with  explosive  breath.  ...  A  race- 
automobile  which  seems  to  rush  over  exploding 
powder  is  more  beautiful  than  the  Victory  of 
Samothrace."  It  is  also  much  easier,  if  you 
have  the  money.  It  is  quite  clear,  however,  that 
you  cannot  be  a  Futurist  at  all  unless  you 
are  frightfully  rich.  Then  follows  this  lucid 
and  soul-stirring  sentence:  "  5.  We  will  sing  the 
praises  of  man  holding  the  flywheel  of  which  the 
ideal  steering-post  traverses  the  earth  impelled 
itself  around  the  circuit  of  its  own  orbit."  What 
a  jolly  song  it  would  be — so  hearty,  and  with 
such  a  simple  swing  in  it!  I  can  imagine  the 
Futurists  round  the  fire  in  a  tavern  trolling  out 
in  chorus  some  ballad  with  that  incomparable 
121 


THE   FUTURISTS 

refrain;  shouting  over  their  swaying  flagons 
some  such  words  as  these: 

A  notion  came  into  my  head  as  new  as  it  was  bright 
That  poems  might  be  written  on  the  subject  of  a  fight ; 
No  praise  was  given  to  Lancelot,  Achilles,  Nap  or  Corbett, 
But  we  will  sing  the  praises  of  man  holding  the  flywheel  of 

which  the  ideal  steering-post  traverses  the  earth  impelled 

itself  around  the  circuit  of  its  own  orbit. 

Then  lest  it  should  be  supposed  that  Futurism 
would  be  so  weak  as  to  permit  any  democratic 
restraints  upon  the  violence  and  levity  of  the 
luxurious  classes,  there  would  be  a  special  verse 
in  honour  of  the  motors  also : 

My  fathers  scaled  the  mountains  in  their  pilgrimages  far, 

But  I  feel  full  of  energy  while  sitting  in  a  car ; 

And  petrol  is  the  perfect  wine,  I  lick  it  and  absorb  it, 

So  we  will  sing  the  praises  of  man  holding  the  flywheel  of 

which  the  ideal  steering-post  traverses  the  earth  impelled 

itself  around  the  circuit  of  its  own  orbit. 

Yes,  it  would  be  a  rollicking  catch.     I  wish 
there  were  space  to  finish  the  song,  or  to  detail 
all  the  other  sections  in  the  Declaration.     Suf- 
fice it  to  say  that  Futurism  has  a  gratifying  dis- 
122 


THE   FUTURISTS 

like  both  of  Liberal  politics  and  Christian 
morals;  I  say  gratifying  because,  however  un- 
fortunately the  cross  and  the  cap  of  liberty  have 
quarrelled,  they  are  always  united  in  the  feeble 
hatred  of  such  silly  megalomaniacs  as  these. 
They  will  "  glorify  war — the  only  true  hygiene 
of  the  world — militarism,  patriotism,  the  de- 
structive gesture  of  Anarchism,  the  beautiful 
ideas  which  kill,  and  the  scorn  of  woman."  They 
will  "  destroy  museums,  libraries,  and  fight 
against  moralism,  feminism,  and  all  utilitarian 
cowardice."  The  proclamation  ends  with  an 
extraordinary  passage  which  I  cannot  under- 
stand at  all,  all  about  something  tl^at  is  going 
to  happen  to  Mr.  Marinetti  when  he  is  forty. 
As  far  as  I  can  make  out  he  will  then  be  killed 
by  other  poets,  who  will  be  overwhelmed  with 
love  and  admiration  for  him.  "  They  will  come 
against  us  from  far  away,  from  everywhere,  leap- 
ing on  the  cadence  of  their  first  poems,  clawing 
the  air  with  crooked  fingers  and  scenting  at  the 
Academy  gates  the  good  smell  of  our  decaying 
minds."  Well,  it  is  satisfactory  to  be  told, 
123 


THE   FUTURISTS 

however  obscurely,  that  this  sort  of  thing  is 
coming  to  an  end  some  day,  to  be  replaced  by 
some  other  tomfoolery.  And  though  I  com- 
monly refrain  from  clawing  the  air  with  crooked 
fingers,  I  can  assure  Mr.  Marinetti  that  this 
omission  does  not  disqualify  me,  and  that  I  scent 
the  good  smell  of  his  decaying  mind  all  right. 

I  think  the  only  other  point  of  Futurism  is 
contained  in  this  sentence :  "  It  is  in  Italy  that 
we  hurl  this  overthrowing  and  inflammatory  De- 
claration, with  which  to-day  we  found  Futurism, 
for  we  will  free  Italy  from  her  numberless  muse- 
ums which  cover  her  with  countless  cemeteries.'* 
I  think  that  rather  sums  it  up.  The  best  way, 
one  would  think,  of  freeing  oneself  from  a  mu- 
seum would  be  not  to  go  there.  Mr.  Marinetti's 
fathers  and  grandfathers  freed  Italy  from  pris- 
ons and  torture  chambers,  places  where  people 
were  held  by  force.  They,  being  in  the 
bondage  of  "  moralism,"  attacked  Governments 
as  unjust,  real  Governments,  with  real  guns. 
Such  was  their  utilitarian  cowardice  that  they 
would  die  in  hundreds  upon  the  bayonets  of 
124 


THE   FUTURISTS 

Austria.  I  can  well  imagine  why  Mr.  Marinetti 
in  his  motor-car  does  not  wish  to  look  back  at 
the  past.  If  there  was  one  thing  that  could 
make  him  look  smaller  even  than  before  it  is 
that  roll  of  dead  men's  drums  and  that  dream 
of  Garibaldi  going  by.  The  old  Radical 
ghosts  go  by,  more  real  than  the  living  men,  to 
assault  I  know  not  what  ramparted  city  in  hell. 
And  meanwhile  the  Futurist  stands  outside  a 
museum  in  a  warlike  attitude,  and  defiantly  tells 
the  official  at  the  turnstile  that  he  will  never, 
never  come  in. 

There  is  a  certain  solid  use  in  fools.  It  is  not 
so  much  that  they  rush  in  where  angels  fear  to 
tread,  but  rather  that  they  let  out  what  devils 
intend  to  do.  Some  perversion  of  folly  will 
float  about  nameless  and  pervade  a  whole  soci- 
ety ;  then  some  lunatic  gives  it  a  name,  and  hence- 
forth it  is  harmless.  With  all  really  evil  things, 
when  the  danger  has  appeared  the  danger  is 
over.  Now  it  may  be  hoped  that  the  self- 
indulgent  sprawlers  of  Poesia  have  put  a  name 
once  and  for  all  to  their  philosophy.  In  the 
125 


THE   FUTURISTS 

case  of  their  philosophy,  to  put  a  name  to  it  is 
to  put  an  end  to  it.  Yet  their  philosophy  has 
been  very  widespread  in  our  time;  it  could 
hardly  have  been  pointed  and  finished  except  by 
this  perfect  folly.  The  creed  of  which  (please 
God)  this  is  the  flower  and  finish  consists 
ultimately  in  this  statement:  that  it  is  bold  and 
spirited  to  appeal  to  the  future.  Now,  it  is 
entirely  weak  and  half-witted  to  appeal  to  the 
future.  A  brave  man  ought  to  ask  for  what 
he  wants,  not  for  what  he  expects  to  get.  A 
brave  man  who  wants  Atheism  in  the  future 
calls  himself  an  Atheist ;  a  brave  man  who  wants 
Socialism,  a  Socialist;  a  brave  man  who  wants 
Catholicism,  a  Catholic.  But  a  weak-minded 
man  who  does  not  know  what  he  wants  in  the 
future  calls  himself  a  Futurist. 

They  have  driven  all  the  pigs  away.  Oh 
that  they  had  driven  away  the  prigs,  and  left 
the  pigs !  The  sky  begins  to  droop  with  dark- 
ness and  all  birds  and  blossoms  to  descend  un- 
faltering into  the  healthy  underworld  where 
126 


THE   FUTURISTS 

things  slumber  and  grow.  There  was  just  one 
true  phrase  of  Mr.  Marinetti's  about  himself: 
"  the  feverish  insomnia."  The  whole  universe 
is  pouring  headlong  to  the  happiness  of  the 
night.  It  is  only  the  madman  who  has  not  the 
courage  to  sleep. 


127 


DUKES 

The  Due  de  Chambertin-Pommard  was  a  small 
but  lively  relic  of  a  really  aristocratic  family, 
the  members  of  which  were  nearly  all  Atheists 
up  to  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution,  but 
since  that  event  (beneficial  in  such  various  ways) 
had  been  very  devout.  He  was  a  Royalist,  a 
Nationalist,  and  a  perfectly  sincere  patriot  in 
that  particular  style  which  consists  of  cease- 
lessly asserting  that  one's  country  is  not  so 
much  in  danger  as  already  destroyed.  He 
wrote  cheery  little  articles  for  the  Royalist  Press 
entitled  "  The  End  of  France  "  or  "  The  Last 
Cry,"  or  what  not,  and  he  gave  the  final  touches 
to  a  picture  of  the  Kaiser  riding  across  a  pave- 
ment of  prostrate  Parisians  with  a  glow  of 
patriotic  exultation.  He  was  quite  poor,  and 
even  his  relations  had  no  money.  He  walked 
briskly  to  all  his  meals  at  a  little  open  cafe,  and 
he  looked  just  like  everybody  else. 
128 


DUKES 

Living  in  a  country  where  aristocracy  does 
not  exist,  he  had  a  high  opinion  of  it.  He 
would  yearn  for  the  swords  and  the  stately 
manners  of  the  Pommards  before  the  Revolu- 
tion— most  of  whom  had  been  (in  theory)  Re- 
publicans. But  he  turned  with  a  more  prac- 
tical eagerness  to  the  one  country  in  Europe 
where  the  tricolour  has  never  flown  and  men 
have  never  been  roughly  equalised  before  the 
State.  The  beacon  and  comfort  of  his  life  was 
England,  which  all  Europe  sees  clearly  as  the 
one  pure  aristocracy  that  remains.  He  had, 
moreover,  a  mild  taste  for  sport  and  kept  an 
English  bulldog,  and  he  believed  the  English 
to  be  a  race  of  bulldogs,  of  heroic  squires,  and 
hearty  yeomen  vassals,  because  he  read  all  this 
in  English  Conservative  papers,  written  by  ex- 
hausted little  Levantine  clerks.  But  his  read- 
ing was  naturally  for  the  most  part  in  the 
French  Conservative  papers  (though  he  knew 
English  well),  and  it  was  in  these  that  he  first 
heard  of  the  horrible  Budget.  There  he  read 
of  the  confiscatory  revolution  planned  by  the 
129 


DUKES 

Lord  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  the  sinister 
Georges  Lloyd.  He  also  read  how  chivalrously 
Prince  Arthur  Balfour  of  Burleigh  had  defied 
that  demagogue,  assisted  by  Austen  the  Lord 
Chamberlain  and  the  gay  and  witty  Walter 
Lang.  And  being  a  brisk  partisan  and  a 
capable  journalist,  he  decided  to  pay  England 
a  special  visit  and  report  to  his  paper  upon  the 
struggle. 

He  drove  for  an  eternity  in  an  open  fly 
through  beautiful  woods,  with  a  letter  of  in- 
troduction in  his  pocket  to  one  duke,  who  was 
to  introduce  him  to  another  duke.  The  end- 
less and  numberless  avenues  of  bewildering  pine 
woods  gave  him  a  queer  feeling  that  he  was  driv- 
ing through  the  countless  corridors  of  a  dream. 
Yet  the  vast  silence  and  freshness  healed  his  ir- 
ritation at  modem  ugliness  and  unrest.  It 
seemed  a  background  fit  for  the  return  of  chiv- 
alry. In  such  a  forest  a  king  and  all  his  court 
might  lose  themselves  hunting  or  a  knight  errant 
might  perish  with  no  companion  but  God.  The 
castle  itself  when  he  reached  it  was  somewhat 
130 


DUKES 

smaller  than  he  had  expected,  but  he  was  de- 
lighted with  its  romantic  and  castellated  outline. 
He  was  just  about  to  alight  when  somel3ody 
opened  two  enormous  gates  at  the  side  and  the 
vehicle  drove  briskly  through. 

"  That  is  not  the  house  ?  "  he  inquired  politely 
of  the  driver. 

"  No,  sir,"  said  the  driver,  controlling  the 
corners  of  his  mouth.     "  The  lodge,  sir." 

"Indeed,"  said  the  Due  de  Chambertin- 
Pommard,  "  that  is  where  the  Duke's  land 
begins  ?  " 

"  Oh  no,  sir,"  said  the  man,  quite  in  dis- 
tress. "  We've  been  in  his  Grace's  land  all 
day." 

The  Frenchman  thanked  him  and  leant  back 
in  the  carriage,  feeling  as  if  everything  were  in- 
credibly huge  and  vast,  like  Gulliver  in  the  coun- 
try of  the  Brobdingnags. 

He  got  out  in  front  of  a  long  fa9ade  of  a 

somewhat  severe  building,  and  a  little  careless 

man  in  a  shoo  ting- jacket  and  knickerbockers  ran 

down  the  steps.     He  had  a  weak,  fair  moustache 

131 


DUKES 

and  dull,  blue,  babyish  eyes;  his  features  were 
insignificant,  but  his  manner  extremely  pleasant 
and  hospitable.  This  was  the  Duke  of  Ayles- 
bury, perhaps  the  largest  landowner  in  Europe, 
and  known  only  as  a  horsebreeder  until  he  be- 
gan to  write  abrupt  little  letters  about  the 
Budget.  He  led  the  French  Duke  upstairs, 
talking  trivialities  in  a  hearty  way,  and  there 
presented  him  to  another  and  more  important 
English  oligarch,  who  got  up  from  a  writing- 
desk  with  a  slightly  senile  jerk.  He  had  a 
gleaming  bald  head  and  glasses ;  the  lower  part 
of  his  face  was  masked  with  a  short,  dark  beard, 
which  did  not  conceal  a  beaming  smile,  not  un- 
mixed with  sharpness.  He  stooped  a  little  as 
he  ran,  like  some  sedentary  head  clerk  or  cashier ; 
and  even  without  the  cheque-book  and  papers  on 
his  desk  would  have  given  the  impression  of  a 
merchant  or  man  of  business.  He  was  dressed 
in  a  light  grey  check  jacket.  He  was  the  Duke 
of  Windsor,  the  great  Unionist  statesman.  Be- 
tween these  two  loose,  amiable  men,  the  little 
Gaul  stood  erect  in  his  blaclwfrock  coat,  with 
182 


DUKES 

the  monstrous  gravity  of  French  ceremonial 
good  manners.  This  stiffness  led  the  Duke  of 
Windsor  to  put  him  at  his  ease  (like  a  tenant), 
and  he  said,  rubbing  his  hands : 

"  I  was  delighted  with  your  letter  .  .  .  de- 
lighted. I  shall  be  very  pleased  if  I  can  give 
you — er — any  details." 

"  My  visit,"  said  the  Frenchman,  "  scarcely 
suffices  for  the  scientific  exhaustion  of  detail. 
I  seek  only  the  idea.  The  idea,  that  is  always 
the  immediate  thing." 

"  Quite  so,"  said  the  other  rapidly ;  "  quite  so 
.  .  .  the  idea." 

Feeling  somehow  that  it  was  his  turn  (the 
English  Duke  having  done  all  that  could  be 
required  of  him)  Pommard  had  to  say :  "  I  mean 
the  idea  of  aristocracy.  I  regard  this  as  the 
las-t  great  battle  for  the  idea.  Aristocracy,  like 
any  other  thing,  must  justify  itself  to  mankind. 
Aristocracy  is  good  because  it  preserves  a  pic- 
ture of  human  dignity  in  a  world  where  that 
dignity  is  often  obscured  by  servile  necessities. 
Aristocracy  alone  can  keep  a  certain  high  reti- 
133 


DUKES 

cence  of  soul  and  body,  a  certain  noble  distance 
between  the  sexes." 

The  Duke  of  Aylesbury,  who  had  a  clouded 
recollection  of  having  squirted  soda-water 
down  the  neck  of  a  Countess  on  the  previous 
evening,  looked  somewhat  gloomy,  as  if  lament- 
ing the  theoretic  spirit  of  the  Latin  race.  The 
elder  Duke  laughed  heartily,  and  said :  "  Well, 
well,  you  know;  we  English  are  horribly  prac- 
tical. With  us  the  great  question  is  the  land. 
Out  here  in  the  country  ...  do  you  know  this 
part? '' 

"  Yes,  yes,"  cried  the  Frenchman  eagerly. 
"  I  see  what  you  mean.  The  country !  the  old 
rustic  life  of  humanity !  A  holy  war  upon  the 
bloated  and  filthy  towns.  What  right  have 
these  anarchists  to  attack  your  busy  and  pros- 
perous countrysides?  Have  they  not  thriven 
under  your  management?  Are  not  the  English 
villages  always  growing  larger  and  gayer  un- 
der the  enthusiastic  leadership  of  their  encour- 
aging squires?  Have  you  not  the  Maypole? 
Have  you  not  Merry  England?  " 
134 


DUKES 

The  Duke  of  Aylesbury  made  a  noise  in  his 
throat,  and  then  said  very  indistinctly :  "  They 
all  go  to  London." 

"All  go  to  London?"  repeated  Pommard, 
with  a  blank  stare.     "  Why.?  " 

This  time  nobody  answered,  and  Pommard 
had  to  attack  again. 

"  The  spirit  of  aristocracy  is  essentially  op- 
posed to  the  greed  of  the  industrial  cities.  Yet 
in  France  there  are  actually  one  or  two  nobles 
so  vile  as  to  drive  coal  and  gas  trades,  and  drive 
them  hard." 

The  Duke  of  Windsor  looked  at  the  carpet. 

The  Duke  of  Aylesbury  went  and  looked  out 
of  the  window.  At  length  the  latter  said: 
"  That's  rather  stiff,  you  know.  One  has  to 
look  after  one's  own  business  in  town  as  well." 

"  Do  not  say  it,"  cried  the  little  Frenchman, 
starting  up.  "  I  tell  you  all  Europe  is  one  fight 
between  business  and  honour.  If  we  do  not 
fight  for  honour,  who  will?  What  other  right 
have  we  poor  two-legged  sinners  to  titles  and 
quartered  shields  except  that  we  staggeringly 
135 


DUKES 

support  some  idea  of  giving  things  which  can- 
not  be  demanded  and  avoiding  things  which  can- 
not be  punished?  Our  only  claim  is  to  be  a 
wall  across  Christendom  against  the  Jew  pedlars 
and  pawnbrokers,  against  the  Goldsteins  and 
the " 

The  Duke  of  Aylesbury  swung  round  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets. 

"  Oh,  I  say,"  he  said,  "  you've  been  readin' 
Lloyd  George.  Nobody  but  dirty  Radicals  can 
say  a  word  against  Goldstein." 

"  I  certainly  cannot  permit,"  said  the  elder 
Duke,  rising  rather  shakily,  "  the  respected 
name  of  Lord  Goldstein " 

He  intended  to  be  impressive,  but  there  was 
something  in  the  Frenchman's  eye  that  is  not  so 
easily  impressed;  there  shone  there  that  steel 
which  is  the  mind  of  France. 

"  Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "  I  think  I  have  all 
the  details  now.  You  have  ruled  England  for 
four  hundred  years.  By  your  own  account  you 
have  not  made  the  countryside  endurable  to  men. 
By  your  own  account  you  have  helped  the  vic- 
136 


DUKES 

tory  of  vulgarity  and  smoke.  And  by  your 
own  account  you  are  hand  and  glove  with  those 
very  money-grubbers  and  adventurers  whom 
gentlemen  have  no  other  business  but  to  keep 
at  bay.  I  do  not  know  what  your  people  will 
do ;  but  my  people  would  kill  you." 

Some  seconds  afterwards  he  had  left  the 
Duke's  house,  and  some  hours  afterwards  the 
Duke's  estate. 


13T 


THE    GLORY    OF    GREY 

I  SUPPOSE  that,  taking  this  summer  as  a  whole, 
people  will  not  call  it  an  appropriate  time  for 
praising  the  English  climate.  But  for  my  part 
I  will  praise  the  English  climate  till  I  die — even 
if  I  die  of  the  English  climate.  There  is  no 
weather  so  good  as  English  weather.  Nay,  in 
a  real  sense  there  is  no  weather  at  all  anywhere 
but  in  England.  In  France  you  have  much  sun 
and  some  rain ;  in  Italy  you  have  hot  winds  and 
cold  winds;  in  Scotland  and  Ireland  you  have 
rain,  either  thick  or  thin ;  in  America  you  have 
hells  of  heat  and  cold,  and  in  the  Tropics  you 
have  sunstrokes  varied  by  thunderbolts.  But 
all  these  you  have  on  a  broad  and  brutal  scale, 
and  you  settle  down  into  contentment  or  despair. 
Only  in  our  own  romantic  country  do  you  have 
the  strictly  romantic  thing  called  Weather; 
beautiful  and  changing  as  a  woman.  The  great 
English  landscape  painters  (neglected  now  like 
138 


THE   GLORY   OF   GREY 

everything  that  is  English)  have  this  salient  dis- 
tinction: that  the  Weather  is  not  the  atmos- 
phere of  their  pictures;  it  is  the  subject  of  their 
pictures.  They  paint  portraits  of  the  Weather. 
The  Weather  sat  to  Constable.  The  Weather 
posed  for  Turner ;  and  a  deuce  of  a  pose  it  was. 
This  cannot  truly  be  said  of  the  greatest  of 
their  continental  models  or  rivals.  Poussin  and 
Claude  painted  objects,  ancient  cities  or  perfect 
Arcadian  shepherds  through  a  clear  medium  of 
the  climate.  But  in  the  English  painters 
Weather  is  the  hero;  with  Turner  an  Adelphi 
hero,  taunting,  flashing  and  fighting,  melo- 
dramatic but  really  magnificent.  The  English 
climate,  a  tall  and  terrible  protagonist,  robed 
in  rain  and  thunder  and  snow  and  sunlight, 
fills  the  whole  canvas  and  the  whole  foreground. 
I  admit  the  superiority  of  many  other  French 
things  besides  French  art.  But  I  will  not 
^^eld  an  inch  on  the  superiority  of  English 
weather  and  weather-painting.  Why,  the 
French  have  not  even  got  a  word  for  Weather : 
and  you  must  ask  for  the  weather  in  French 
139 


THE   GLORY   OP   GREY 

as  if  you  were  asking  for  the  time  in  Eng- 
lish. 

Then,  again,  variety  of  climate  should  always 
go  with  stability  of  abode.  The  weather  in  the 
desert  is  monotonous ;  and  as  a  natural  conse- 
quence the  Arabs  wander  about,  hoping  it  may 
be  different  somewhere.  But  an  Englishman's 
house  is  not  only  his  castle ;  it  is  his  fairy  castle. 
Clouds  and  colours  of  every  varied  dawn  and  eve 
are  perpetually  touching  and  turning  it  from 
clay  to  gold,  or  from  gold  to  ivory.  There  is  a 
line  of  woodland  beyond  a  corner  of  my  garden 
which  is  literally  different  on  every  one  of  the 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days.  Sometimes 
it  seems  as  near  as  a  hedge,  and  sometimes  as  far 
as  a  faint  and  fiery  evening  cloud.  The  same 
principle  (by  the  way)  applies  to  the  difficult 
problem  of  wives.  Variability  is  one  of  the  vir- 
tues of  a  woman.  It  avoids  the  crude  require- 
ment of  polygamy.  So  long  as  you  have  one 
good  wife  you  are  sure  to  have  a  spiritual 
harem. 

Now,  among  the  heresies  that  are  spoken  in 
140 


THE   GLORY   OF   GREY 

this  matter  is  the  habit  of  calling  a  grey  day  a 
"  colourless  "  day.  Grey  is  a  colour,  and  can 
be  a  very  powerful  and  pleasing  colour.  There 
is  also  an  insulting  style  of  speech  about  "  one 
grey  day  just  like  another."  You  might  as 
well  talk  about  one  green  tree  just  like  another. 
A  grey  clouded  sky  is  indeed  a  canopy  between 
us  and  the  sun ;  so  is  a  green  tree,  if  it  comes  to 
that.  But  the  grey  umbrellas  differ  as  much  as 
the  green  in  their  style  and  shape,  in  their  tint 
and  tilt.  One  day  may  be  grey  like  steel,  and 
another  grey  like  dove's  plumage.  One  may 
seem  grey  like  the  deathly  frost,  and  another 
grey  like  the  smoke  of  substantial  kitchens.  No 
things  could  seem  further  apart  than  the  doubt 
of  grey  and  the  decision  of  scarlet.  Yet  grey 
and  red  can  mingle,  as  they  do  in  the  morning 
clouds :  and  also  in  a  sort  of  warm  smoky  stone 
of  which  they  build  the  little  towns  in  the  west 
country.  In  those  towns  even  the  houses  that 
are  wholly  grey  have  a  glow  in  them  as  if  their 
secret  firesides  were  such  furnaces  of  hospitality 
as  faintly  to  transfuse  the  walls  like  walls  of 
141 


THE    GLORY   OF   GREY 

cloud.  And  wandering  in  those  westland  parts 
I  did  once  really  find  a  sign-post  pointing  up  a 
steep  crooked  path  to  a  town  that  was  called 
Clouds.  I  did  not  climb  up  to  it;  I  feared  that 
either  the  town  would  not  be  good  enough  for 
the  name,  or  I  should  not  be  good  enough  for  the 
town.  Anyhow,  the  little  hamlets  of  the  warm 
grey  stone  have  a  geniality  which  is  not  achieved 
by  all  the  artistic  scarlet  of  the  suburbs ;  as  if  it 
were  better  to  warm  one's  hands  at  the  ashes  of 
Glastonbury  than  at  the  painted  flames  of 
Croydon. 

Again,  the  enemies  of  grey  (those  astute,  dar- 
ing and  evil-minded  men)  are  fond  of  bringing 
forward  the  argument  that  colours  suffer  in 
grey  weather,  and  that  strong  sunlight  is  neces- 
sary to  all  the  hues  of  heaven  and  earth.  Here 
again  there  are  two  words  to  be  said;  and  it  is 
essential  to  distinguish.  It  is  true  that  sun  is 
needed  to  burnish  and  bring  into  bloom  the  ter- 
tiary and  dubious  colours ;  the  colour  of  peat, 
pea-soup.  Impressionist  sketches,  brown  velvet 
coats,  olives,  grey  and  blue  slates,  the  com- 
14^ 


THE   GLORY   OF   GREY 

plexions  of  vegetarians,  the  tints  of  volcanic 
rock,  chocolate,  cocoa,  mud,  soot,  slime,  old 
boots ;  the  delicate  shades  of  these  do  need  the 
sunlight  to  bring  out  the  faint  beauty  that  often 
clings  to  them.  But  if  you  have  a  healthy  negro 
taste  in  colour,  if  you  choke  your  garden  with 
poppies  and  geraniums,  if  you  paint  your  house 
sky-blue  and  scarlet,  if  you  wear,  let  us  say,  a 
golden  top-hat  and  a  crimson  frock-coat,  you 
will  not  only  be  visible  on  the  greyest  day,  but 
you  will  notice  that  your  costume  and  environ- 
ment produce  a  certain  singular  effect.  You 
will  find,  I  mean,  that  rich  colours  actually  look 
more  luminous  on  a  grey  day,  because  they  are 
seen  against  a  sombre  background  and  seem  to 
be  burning  with  a  lustre  of  their  own.  Against 
a  dark  sky  all  flowers  look  like  fireworks.  There 
is  something  strange  about  them,  at  once  vivid 
and  secret,  like  flowers  traced  in  fire  in  the  phan- 
tasmal garden  of  a  witch.  A  bright  blue  sky 
is  necessarily  the  high  light  of  the  picture;  and 
its  brightness  kills  all  the  bright  blue  flowers. 
But  on  a  grey  day  the  larkspur  looks  like  fallen 
143 


THE   GLORY   OF   GREY 

heaven;  the  red  daisies  are  really  the  red  lost 
eyes  of  day ;  and  the  sunflower  is  the  vice-regent 
of  the  sun. 

Lastly,  there  is  this  value  about  the  colour 
that  men  call  colourless ;  that  it  suggests  in  some 
way  the  mixed  and  troubled  average  of  existence, 
especially  in  its  quality  of  strife  and  expectation 
and  promise.  Grey  is  a  colour  that  always 
seems  on  the  eve  of  changing  to  some  other 
colour;  of  brightening  into  blue  or  blanching 
into  white  or  bursting  into  green  and  gold.  So 
we  may  be  perpetually  reminded  of  the  indefinite 
hope  that  is  in  doubt  itself;  and  when  there  is 
grey  weather  in  our  hills  or  grey  hairs  in  our 
heads,  perhaps  they  may  still  remind  us  of  the 
morning. 


144 


THE    ANARCHIST 

I  HAVE  now  lived  for  about  two  months  in  the 
country,  and  have  gathered  the  last  rich 
autumnal  fruit  of  a  rural  life,  which  is  a  strong 
desire  to  see  London.  Artists  living  in  my 
neighbourhood  talk  rapturously  of  the  rolling 
liberty  of  the  landscape,  the  living  peace  of 
woods.  But  I  say  to  them  (with  a  slight  Buck- 
inghamshire accent),  "  Ah,  that  is  how  Cockneys 
feel.  For  us  real  old  country  people  the  coun- 
try is  reality;  it  is  the  town  that  is  romance. 
Nature  is  as  plain  as  one  of  her  pigs,  as  com- 
monplace, as  comic,  and  as  healthy.  But  civ- 
ilisation is  full  of  poetry,  even  if  it  be  some- 
times an  evil  poetry.  The  streets  of  London  are 
paved  with  gold ;  that  is,  with  the  very  poetry  of 
avarice."  With  these  typically  bucolic  words  I 
touch  my  hat  and  go  ambling  away  on  a  stick, 
with  a  stiffness  of  gait  proper  to  the  Oldest  In- 
habitant ;  while  in  my  more  animated  moments  I 
145 


THE   ANARCHIST 

am  taken  for  the  Village  Idiot.  Exchanging 
heavy  but  courteous  salutations  with  other  gaf- 
fers, I  reach  the  station,  where  I  ask  for  a  ticket 
for  London  where  the  king  lives.  Such  a  jour- 
ney, mingled  of  provincial  fascination  and  fear, 
did  I  successfully  perform  only  a  few  days  ago ; 
and  alone  and  helpless  in  the  capital,  found 
myself  in  the  tangle  of  roads  around  the  Marble 
Arch. 

A  faint  prejudice  may  possess  the  mind  that  I 
have  slightly  exaggerated  my  rusticity  and  re- 
moteness. And  yet  it  is  true  as  I  came  to  that 
corner  of  the  Park  that,  for  some  unreasonable 
reason  of  mood,  I  saw  all  London  as  a  strange 
city  and  civilisation  itself  as  one  enormous  whim. 
The  Marble  Arch  itself,  in  its  new  insular  posi- 
tion, with  traffic  turning  dizzily  all  about  it, 
struck  me  as  a  placid  monstrosity.  What  could 
be  wilder  than  to  have  a  huge  arched  gateway, 
with  people  going  everywhere  except  under  it? 
If  I  took  down  my  front  door  and  stood  it  up 
all  by  itself  in  the  middle  of  my  back  garden, 
my  village  neighbours  (in  their  simplicity) 
146 


THE   ANARCHIST 

would  probably  stare.  Yet  the  Marble  Arch  is 
now  precisely  that;  an  elaborate  entrance  and 
the  only  place  by  which  no  one  can  enter.  By 
the  new  arrangement  its  last  weak  pretence  to 
be  a  gate  has  been  taken  away.  The  cabman 
still  cannot  drive  through  it,  but  he  can  have 
the  delights  of  riding  round  it,  and  even  (on 
foggy  nights)  the  rapture  of  running  into  iti 
It  has  been  raised  from  the  rank  of  a  fiction  to 
the  dignity  of  an  obstacle. 

As  I  began  to  walk  across  a  comer  of  the 
Park,  this  sense  of  what  is  strange  in  cities  be- 
gan to  mingle  with  some  sense  of  what  is  stern 
as  well  as  strange.  It  was  one  of  those  queer- 
coloured  winter  days  when  a  watery  sky  changes 
to  pink  and  grey  and  green,  like  an  enormous 
opal.  The  trees  stood  up  grey  and  angular,  as 
if  in  attitudes  of  agony;  and  here  and  there  on 
benches  under  the  trees  sat  men  as  grey  and 
angular  as  they.  It  was  cold  even  for  me,  who 
had  eaten  a  large  breakfast  and  purposed  to 
eat  a  perfectly  Gargantuan  lunch ;  it  was  colder 
for  the  men  under  the  trees.  And  to  eastward 
147 


THE   ANARCHIST 

through  the  opalescent  haze,  the  warmer  whites 
and  yellows  of  the  houses  in  Park-lane  shone 
as  unsubstantially  as  if  the  clouds  themselves 
had  taken  on  the  shape  of  mansions  to  mock 
the  men  who  sat  there  in  the  cold.  But  the 
mansions  were  real — like  the  mockery. 

No  one  worth  calling  a  man  allows  his  moods 
to  change  his  convictions;  but  it  is  by  moods 
that  we  understand  other  men's  convictions. 
The  bigot  is  not  he  who  knows  he  is  right ;  every 
sane  man  knows  he  is  right.  The  bigot  is  he 
whose  emotions  and  imagination  are  too  cold 
and  weak  to  feel  how  it  is  that  other  men  go 
wrong.  At  that  moment  I  felt  vividly  how  men 
might  go  wrong,  even  unto  dynamite.  If  one 
of  those  huddled  men  under  the  trees  had  stood 
up  and  asked  for  rivers  of  blood,  it  would  have 
been  erroneous — but  not  irrelevant.  It  would 
have  been  appropriate  and  in  the  picture;  that 
lurid  grey  picture  of  insolence  on  one  side  and 
impotence  on  the  other.  It  may  be  true  (on  the 
whole  it  is)  that  this  social  machine  we  have 
made  is  better  than  anarchy.  Still,  it  is  a  ma- 
148 


THE   ANARCHIST 

chine ;  and  we  have  made  it.  It  does  hold  those 
poor  men  helpless;  and  it  does  lift  those  rich 
men  high  .  .  .  and  such  men — ^good  Lord !  By 
the  time  I  flung  myself  on  a  bench  beside  an- 
other man  I  was  half  inclined  to  try  anarchy 
for  a  change. 

The  other  was  of  more  prosperous  appear- 
ance than  most  of  the  men  on  such  seats;  still, 
^  he  was  not  what  one  calls  a  gentleman,  and  had 
probably  worked  at  some  time  like  a  human  be- 
ing. He  was  a  small,  sharp-faced  man,  with 
grave,  staring  eyes,  and  a  beard  somewhat  for- 
eign. His  clothes  were  black;  respectable  and 
yet  casual;  those  of  a  man  who  dressed  conven- 
tionally because  it  was  a  bore  to  dress  uncon- 
ventionally— as  it  is.  Attracted  by  this  and 
other  things,  and  wanting  an  outburst  for  my 
bitter  social  feelings,  I  tempted  him  into  speech, 
first  about  the  cold,  and  then  about  the  General 
Election.     To  this  the  respectable  man  replied: 

"  Well,  I  don't  belong  to  any  party  myself. 
Fm  an  Anarchist." 

I  looked  up  and  almost  expected  fire  from 
149 


THE   ANARCHIST 

heaven.  This  coincidence  was  like  the  end  of 
the  world.  I  had  sat  down  feeling  that  some- 
how or  other  Park-lane  must  be  pulled  down; 
and  I  had  sat  down  beside  the  man  who  wanted 
to  pull  it  down.  I  bowed  in  silence  for  an  in-, 
stant  under  the  approaching  apocalypse;  and 
in  that  instant  the  man  turned  sharply  and 
started  talking  like  a  torrent. 

"  Understand  me,"  he  said.  "  Ordinary  peo- 
ple think  an  Anarchist  means  a  man  with  a 
bomb  in  his  pocket.  Herbert  Spencer  was  an 
Anarchist.  But  for  that  fatal  admission  of  his 
on  page  793,  he  would  be  a  complete  Anarchist. 
Otherwise,  he  agrees  wholly  with  Pidge." 

This  was  uttered  with  such  blinding  rapidity 
of  syllabification  as  to  be  a  better  test  of  teeto- 
talism  than  the  Scotch  one  of  saying  "  Biblical 
criticism "  six  times.  I  attempted  to  speak, 
but  he  began  again  with  the  same  rippling 
rapidity. 

"  You  will  say  that  Pidge  also  admits  govern- 
ment in  that  tenth  chapter  so  easily  misunder- 
stood.    Bolger   has    attacked   Pidge   on   those 
160 


THE    ANARCHIST 

lines.  But  Bolger  has  no  scientific  training. 
Bolger  is  a  psjchometrist,  but  no  sociologist. 
To  any  one  who  has  combined  a  study  of  Pidge 
with  the  earlier  and  better  discoveries  of  Kruxy, 
the  fallacy  is  quite  clear.  Bolger  confounds 
social  coercion  with  coercional  social  action." 

His  rapid  rattling  mouth  shut  quite  tight 
suddenly,  and  he  looked  steadily  and  triumph- 
antly at  me,  with  his  head  on  one  side.  I  opened 
my  mouth,  and  the  mere  motion  seemed  to  sting 
him  to  fresh  verbal  leaps. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  that's  all  very  well.  The 
Finland  Group  has  accepted  Bolger.  But,"  he 
said,  suddenly  lifting  a  long  finger  as  if  to  stop 
me,  "  but — Pidge  has  replied.  His  pamphlet 
is  published.  He  has  proved  that  Potential  So- 
cial Rebuke  is  not  a  weapon  of  the  true  An- 
archist. He  has  shown  that  just  as  religious 
authority  and  political  authority  have  gone,  so 
must  emotional  authority  and  psychological 
authority.     He  has  shown " 

I  stood  up  in  a  sort  of  daze.  "  I  think  you 
remarked,"  I  said  feebly,  "  that  the  mere  com- 
151 


THE   ANARCHIST 

mon  populace  do  not  quite  understand  An- 
archism  " 

"  Quite  so,"  he  said  with  burning  swiftness ; 
**  as  I  said,  they  think  any  Anarchist  is  a  man 
with  a  bomb,  whereas " 

''  But  great  heavens,  man !  "  I  said ;  "  it's  the 
man  with  the  bomb  that  I  understand!  I  wish 
you  had  half  his  sense.  What  do  I  care  how 
many  German  dons  tie  themselves  in  knots  about 
how  this  society  began?  My  only  interest  is 
about  how  soon  it  will  end.  Do  you  see  those 
fat  white  houses  over  in  Park-lane,  where  your 
masters  live  ?  " 

He  assented  and  muttered  something  about 
concentrations  of  capital. 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  if  the  time  ever  comes  when 
we  all  storm  those  houses,  will  you  tell  me  one 
thing?  Tell  me  how  we  shall  do  it  without 
authority?  Tell  me  how  you  will  have  an  army 
of  revolt  without  discipline?  " 

For  the  first  instant  he  was  doubtful;  and  I 
had  bidden  him  farewell,  and  crossed  the  street 
again^  when  I  saw  him  open  his  mouth  and  begin 
152 


THE    ANARCHIST 

to  run  after  me.     He  had  remembered  something 
out  of  Pidge. 

I  escaped,  however,  and  as  I  leapt  on  an  om- 
nibus I  saw  again  the  enormous  emblem  of  the 
Marble  Arch.  I  saw  that  massive  symbol  of 
the  modern  mind:  a  door  with  no  house  to  it; 
the  gigantic  gate  of  Nowhere. 


16S 


HOW    I    FOUND    THE    SUPERMAN 

Readers  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  and  other  mod- 
em writers  may  be  interested  to  know  that  the 
Superman  has  been  found.  I  found  him;  he 
lives  in  South  Croydon.  My  success  will  be  a 
great  blow  to  Mr.  Shaw,  who  has  been  following 
quite  a  false  scent,  and  is  now  looking  for  the 
creature  in  Blackpool;  and  as  for  Mr.  Wells's 
notion  of  generating  him  out  of  gases  in  a  pri- 
vate laboratory,  I  always  thought  it  doomed  to 
failure.  I  assure  Mr.  Wells  that  the  Superman 
at  Croydon  was  born  in  the  ordinary  way, 
though  he  himself,  of  course,  is  anything  but 
ordinary. 

Nor  are  his  parents  unworthy  of  the  wonder- 
ful being  whom  they  have  given  to  the  world. 
The  name  of  Lady  Hypatia  Smythe-Browne 
(now  Lady  Hypatia  Hagg)  will  never  be  for- 
gotten in  the  East  End,  where  she  did  such 
splendid  social  work.  Her  constant  cry  of 
154 


HOW  I  FOUND  THE   SUPERMAN 

*^  Save  the  children !  "  referred  to  the  cruel  neg- 
lect of  children's  eyesight  involved  in  allowing 
them  to  play  with  crudely  painted  toys.  She 
quoted  unanswerable  statistics  to  prove  that 
children  allowed  to  look  at  violet  and  vermilion 
often  suffered  from  failing  eyesight  in  their 
extreme  old  age ;  and  it  was  owing  to  her  cease- 
less crusade  that  the  pestilence  of  the  Monkey- 
on-the-Stick  was  almost  swept  from  Hoxton. 
The  devoted  worker  would  tramp  the  streets  un- 
tiringly, taking  away  the  toys  from  all  the  poor 
children,  who  were  often  moved  to  tears  by  her 
kindness.  Her  good  work  was  interrupted, 
partly  by  a  new  interest  in  the  creed  of  Zoro- 
aster, and  partly  by  a  savage  blow  from  an  um- 
brella. It  was  inflicted  by  a  dissolute  Irish 
apple-woman,  who,  on  returning  from  some  orgy 
to  her  ill-kept  apartment,  found  Lady  Hypatia 
in  the  bedroom  taking  down  an  oleograph, 
which,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  could  not  really 
elevate  the  mind.  At  this  the  ignorant  and 
partly  intoxicated  Celt  dealt  the  social  reformer 
a  severe  blow,  adding  to  it  an  absurd  accusation 
155 


HOW  I  FOUND  THE   SUPERMAN 

of  theft.  The  lady's  exquisitely  balanced  mind 
received  a  shock,  and  it  was  during  a  short  men- 
tal illness  that  she  married  Dr.  Hagg. 

Of  Dr.  Hagg  himself  I  hope  there  is  no  need 
to  speak.  Any  one  even  slightly  acquainted 
with  those  daring  experiments  in  Neo-Individu- 
alist  Eugenics,  which  are  now  the  one  absorbing 
interest  of  the  English  democracy,  must  know 
his  name  and  often  commend  it  to  the  personal 
protection  of  an  impersonal  power.  Early  in 
life  he  brought  to  bear  that  ruthless  insight 
into  the  history  of  religions  which  he  had  gained 
in  boyhood  as  an  electrical  engineer.  Later  he 
became  one  of  our  greatest  geologists;  and 
achieved  that  bold  and  bright  outlook  upon  the 
future  Socialism  which  only  geology  can  give. 
At  first  there  seemed  something  like  a  rift,  a 
faint,  but  perceptible,  fissure,  between  his  views 
and  those  of  his  aristocratic  wife.  For  she  was 
in  favour  (to  use  her  own  powerful  epigram) 
of  protecting  the  poor  against  themselves; 
while  he  declared  pitilessly,  in  a  new  and  strik- 
ing metaphor,  that  the  weakest  must  go  to  the 
166 


HOW  I  FOUND  THE   SUPERMAN 

wall.  Eventually,  however,  the  married  pair 
perceived  an  essential  union  in  the  unmistakably 
modem  character  of  both  their  views;  and  in 
this  enlightening  and  intelligible  formula  their 
souls  found  peace.  The  result  is  that  this  union 
of  the  two  highest  types  of  our  civilisation,  the 
fashionable  lady  and  the  all  but  vulgar  medical 
man,  has  been  blessed  by  the  birth  of  the  Super- 
man, that  being  whom  all  the  labourers  in  Bat- 
tersea  are  so  eagerly  expecting  night  and  day. 

I  found  the  house  of  Dr.  and  Lady  Hypatia 
Hagg  without  much  difficulty;  it  is  situated  in 
one  of  the  last  straggling  streets  of  Croydon, 
and  overlooked  by  a  line  of  poplars.  I  reached 
the  door  towards  the  twilight,  and  it  was  natural 
that  I  should  fancifully  see  something  dark  and 
monstrous  in  the  dim  bulk  of  that  house  which 
contained  the  creature  who  was  more  marvellous 
than  the  children  of  men.  When  I  entered  the 
house  I  was  received  with  exquisite  courtesy  by 
Lady  Hypatia  and  her  husband;  but  I  found 
much  greater  difficulty  in  actually  seeing  the  Su- 
157 


HOW  I  FOUND  THE   SUPERMAN 

perman,  who  is  now  about  fifteen  years  old,  and 
is  kept  by  himself  in  a  quiet  room.  Even  my 
conversation  with  the  father  and  mother  did 
not  quite  clear  up  the  character  of  this  mysteri- 
ous being.  Lady  Hypatia,  who  has  a  pale  and 
poignant  face,  and  is  clad  in  those  impalpable 
and  pathetic  greys  and  greens  with  which  she 
has  brightened  so  many  homes  in  Hoxton,  did 
not  appear  to  talk  of  her  offspring  with  any  of 
the  vulgar  vanity  of  an  ordinary  human  mother. 
I  took  a  bold  step  and  asked  if  the  Superman 
was  nice  looking. 

"  He  creates  his  own  standard,  you  see,"  she 
replied,  with  a  slight  sigh.  "  Upon  that  plane 
he  is  more  than  Apollo.  Seen  from  our  lower 
plane,  of  course "     And  she  sighed  again. 

I  had  a  horrible  impulse,  and  said  suddenly, 
"  Has  he  got  any  hair.?  " 

There  was  a  long  and  painful  silence,  and 
then  Dr.  Hagg  said  smoothly :  "  Everything 
upon  that  plane  is  different ;  what  he  has  got  is 
not  .  .  .  well,  not,  of  course,  what  we  call  hair 

.  .  .  but " 

158 


HOW  I  FOUND  THE   SUPERMAN 

"  Don't  you  think,"  said  his  wife,  very  softly, 
"  don't  you  think  that  really,  for  the  sake  of 
argument,  when  talking  to  the  mere  public,  one 
might  call  it  hair?  " 

"  Perhaps  you  are  right,"  said  the  doctor 
after  a  few  moments'  reflection.  "  In  connection 
with  hair  like  that  one  must  speak  in  parables." 

"  Well,  what  on  earth  is  it,"  I  asked  in  some 
irritation,  "  if  it  isn't  hair?     Is  it  feathers?  " 

"  Not  feathers,  as  we  understand  feathers," 
answered  Hagg  in  an  awful  voice. 

I  got  up  in  some  irritation.  "  Can  I  see  him, 
at  any  rate?  "  I  asked.  "  I  am  a  journalist, 
and  have  no  earthly  motives  except  curiosity 
and  personal  vanity.  I  should  like  to  say  that 
I  had  shaken  hands  with  the  Superman." 

The  husband  and  wife  had  both  got  heavily  to 
their  feet,  and  stood,  embarrassed. 

"  Well,  of  course,  you  know,"  said  Lady  Hy- 
patia,  with  the  really  charming  smile  of  the  aris- 
tocratic hosifcess.  "  You  know  he  can't  exactly 
shake  hands  .   .  .  not  hands,  you  know.  .  .  . 

The  structure,  of  course " 

159 


HOW  I  FOUND  THE   SUPERMAN 

I  broke  out  of  all  social  bounds,  and  rushed 
at  the  door  of  the  room  which  I  thought  to  con- 
tain the  incredible  creature.  I  burst  it  open; 
the  room  was  pitch  dark.  But  from  in  front 
of  me  came  a  small  sad  yelp,  and  from  behind 
me  a  double  shriek. 

"  You  have  done  it,  now ! "  cried  Dr.  Hagg, 
burying  his  bald  brow  in  his  hands.  "  You  have 
let  in  a  draught  on  him  and  he  is  dead." 

As  I  walked  away  from  Croydon  that  night  I 
saw  men  in  black  carrying  out  a  coffin  that  was 
not  of  any  human  shape.  The  wind  wailed 
above  me,  whirling  the  poplars,  so  that  they 
drooped  and  nodded  like  the  plumes  of  some 
cosmic  funeral.  "  It  is,  indeed,"  said  Dr.  Hagg, 
"  the  whole  universe  weeping  over  the  frustra- 
tion of  its  most  magnificent  birth."  But  I 
thought  that  there  was  a  hoot  of  laughter  in 
the  high  wail  of  the  wind. 


160 


THE    NEW    HOUSE 

Within  a  stone's  throw  of  my  house  they  are 
building  another  house.  I  am  glad  they  are 
building  it,  and  I  am  glad  it  is  within  a  stone's 
throw;  quite  well  within  it,  with  a  good  cata- 
pult. Nevertheless,  I  have  not  yet  cast  the  first 
stone  at  the  new  house — not  being,  strictly 
speaking,  guiltless  myself  in  the  matter  of  new 
houses.  And,  indeed,  in  such  cases  there  is  a 
strong  protest  to  be  made.  The  whole  curse  of 
the  last  century  has  been  what  is  called  the 
Swing  of  the  Pendulum;  that  is,  the  idea  that 
Man  must  go  alternately  from  one  extreme  to 
the  other.  It  is  a  shameful  and  even  shocking 
fancy;  it  is  the  denial  of  the  whole  dignity  of 
mankind.  When  Man  is  alive  he  stands  still. 
It  is  only  when  he  is  dead  that  he  swings.  But 
whenever  one  meets  modern  thinkers  (as  one 
often  does)  progressing  towards  a  madhouse, 
one  always  finds,  on  inquiry,  that  they  have  just 
161 


THE    NEW   HOUSE 

had  a  splendid  escape  from  another  madhouse. 
Thus,  hundreds  of  people  become  Socialists,  not 
because  thej  have  tried  Socialism  and  found  it 
nice,  but  because  they  have  tried  Individualism 
and  found  it  particularly  nasty.  Thus,  many 
embrace  Christian  Science  solely  because  they 
are  quite  sick  of  heathen  science ;  they  are  so 
tired  of  believing  that  everything  is  matter  that 
they  will  even  take  refuge  in  the  revolting  fable 
that  everything  is  mind.  Man  ought  to  march 
somewhere.  But  modern  man  (in  his  sick  re- 
action) is  ready  to  march  nowhere — so  long  as 
it  is  the  Other  End  of  Nowhere. 

The  case  of  building  houses  is  a  strong  in- 
stance of  this.  Early  in  the  nineteenth  century 
our  civilisation  chose  to  abandon  the  Greek  and 
mediaeval  idea  of  a  town,  with  walls,  limited  and 
defined,  with  a  temple  for  faith  and  a  market- 
place for  politics ;  and  it  chose  to  let  the  city 
grow  like  a  jungle  with  blind  cruelty  and  bestial 
unconsciousness ;  so  that  London  and  Liverpool 
are  the  great  cities  we  now  see.  Well,  people 
have  reacted  against  that ;  they  have  grown  tired 
16a 


THE    NEW   HOUSE 

of  living  in  a  city  which  is  as  dark  and  barbaric 
as  a  forest,  only  not  as  beautiful,  and  there  has 
been  an  exodus  into  the  country  of  those  who 
could  afford  it,  and  some  I  could  name  who 
can't.  Now,  as  soon  as  this  quite  rational  re- 
coil occurred,  it  flew  at  once  to  the  opposite  ex- 
treme. People  went  about  with  beaming  faces, 
boasting  that  they  were  twenty-three  miles  from 
a  station.  Rubbing  their  hands,  they  exclaimed 
in  rollicking  asides  that  their  butcher  only  called 
once  a  month,  and  that  their  baker  started  out 
with  fresh  hot  loaves  which  were  quite  stale  be- 
fore they  reached  the  table.  A  man  would^ 
praise  his  little  house  in  a  quiet  valley,  but 
gloomily  admit  (with  a  slight  shake  of  the 
head)  that  a  human  habitation  on  the  distant 
horizon  was  faintly  discernible  on  a  clear  day. 
Rival  ruralists  would  quarrel  about  which  had 
the  most  completely  inconvenient  postal  service ; 
and  there  were  many  jealous  heartburnings  if 
one  friend  found  out  any  uncomfortable  situa- 
tion which  the  other  friend  had  thoughtlessly 
overlooked. 

163 


THE   NEW   HOUSE 

In  the  feverish  summer  of  this  fanaticism 
there  arose  the  phrase  that  this  or  that  part  of 
England  is  being  "  built  over."  Now,  there  is 
not  the  slightest  objection,  in  itself,  to  Eng- 
land being  built  over  by  men,  any  more  than 
there  is  to  its  being  (as  it  is  already)  built  over 
by  birds,  or  by  squirrels,  or  by  spiders.  But  if 
birds'  nests  were  so  thick  on  a  tree  that  one 
could  see  nothing  but  nests  and  no  leaves  at  all, 
I  should  say  that  bird  civilisation  was  becoming 
a  bit  decadent.  If  whenever  I  tried  to  walk 
down  the  road  I  found  the  whole  thoroughfare 
one  crawling  carpet  of  spiders,  closely  inter- 
locked, I  should  feel  a  distress  verging  on  dis- 
taste. If  one  were  at  every  turn  crowded,  el- 
bowed, overlooked,  overcharged,  sweated,  rack- 
rented,  swindled,  and  sold  up  by  avaricious  and 
arrogant  squirrels,  one  might  at  last  remon- 
strate. But  the  great  towns  have  grown  intol- 
erable solely  because  of  such  suffocating  vulgar- 
ities and  tyrannies.  It  is  not  humanity  that 
disgusts  us  in  the  huge  cities ;  it  is  inhumanity. 
It  is  not  that  there  are  human  beings ;  but  that 
164 


THE    NEW   HOUSE 

they  are  not  treated  as  such.  We  do  not,  I 
hope,  disUke  men  and  women;  we  only  dislike 
their  being  made  into  a  sort  of  jam:  crushed  to- 
gether so  that  they  are  not  merely  powerless 
but  shapeless.  It  is  not  the  presence  of  people 
that  makes  London  appalling.  It  is  merely  the 
absence  of  The  People. 

Therefore,  I  dance  with  joy  to  think  that  my 
part  of  England  is  being  built  over,  so  long 
as  it  is  being  built  over  in  a  human  way  at 
human  intervals  and  in  a  human  proportion. 
So  long,  in  short,  as  I  am  not  myself  built  over, 
like  a  pagan  slave  buried  in  the  foundations  of  a 
temple,  or  an  American  clerk  in  a  star-striking 
pagoda  of  flats,  I  am  delighted  to  see  the  faces 
and  the  homes  of  a  race  of  bipeds,  to  which  I  am 
not  only  attracted  by  a  strange  affection,  but  to 
which  also  (by  a  touching  coincidence)  I  actu- 
ally happen  to  belong.  I  am  not  one  desiring 
deserts.  I  am  not  Timon  of  Athens;  if  my 
town  were  Athens  I  would  stay  in  it.  I  am  not 
Simeon  Stylites ;  except  in  the  mournful  sense 
that  every  Saturday  I  find  myself  on  the  top 
165 


THE    NEW   HOUSE 

of  a  newspaper  column.  I  am  not  in  the  desert 
repenting  of  some  monstrous  sins ;  at  least,  I  am 
repenting  of  them  all  right,  but  not  in  the 
desert.  I  do  not  want  the  nearest  human  house 
to  be  too  distant  to  see;  that  is  my  objection 
to  the  wilderness.  But  neither  do  I  want  the 
nearest  human  house  to  be  too  close  to  see ;  that 
is  my  objection  to  the  modern  city.  I  love  my 
fellow-man ;  I  do  not  want  him  so  far  off  that  I 
can  only  observe  anything  of  him  through  a 
telescope,  nor  do  I  want  him  so  close  that  I  can 
examine  parts  of  him  with  a  microscope.  I 
want  him  within  a  stone's  throw  of  me ;  so  that 
whenever  it  is  really  necessary,  I  may  throw  the 
stone. 

Perhaps,  after  all,  it  may  not  be  a  stone. 
Perhaps,  after  all,  it  may  be  a  bouquet,  or  a 
snowball,  or  a  firework,  or  a  Free  Trade  Loaf; 
perhaps  they  will  ask  for  a  stone  and  I  shall 
give  them  bread.  But  it  is  essential  that  they 
should  be  within  reach :  how  can  I  love  my  neigh- 
bour as  myself  if  he  gets  out  of  range  for  snow- 
balls.? There  should  be  no  institution  out  of 
166 


THE    NEW   HOUSE 

the  reach  of  an  indignant  or  admiring  human- 
ity. I  could  hit  the  nearest  house  quite  well 
with  the  catapult ;  but  the  truth  is  that  the  cata- 
pult belongs  to  a  little  boy  I  know,  and,  with 
characteristic  youthful  selfishness,  he  has  taken 
it  away. 


167 


THE    WINGS    OF    STONE 

The  preceding  essay  is  about  a  half-built  house 
upon  my  private  horizon ;  I  wrote  it  sitting  in  a 
garden-chair;  and  as,  though  it  was  a  week 
ago,  I  have  scarcely  moved  since  then  (to  speak 
of),  I  do  not  see  why  I  should  not  go  on  writing 
about  it.  Strictly  speaking,  I  have  moved;  I 
have  even  walked  across  a  field — a  field  of  turf 
all  fiery  in  our  early  summer  sunlight — and 
studied  the  early  angular  red  skeleton  which  has 
turned  golden  in  the  sun.  It  is  odd  that  the 
skeleton  of  a  house  is  cheerful  when  the  skeleton 
of  a  man  is  mournful,  since  we  only  see  it  after 
the  man  is  destroyed.  At  least,  we  think  the 
skeleton  is  mournful;  the  skeleton  himself  does 
not  seem  to  think  so.  Anyhow,  there  is  some- 
thing strangely  primary  and  poetic  about  this 
sight  of  the  scaffolding  and  main  lines  of  a 
human  building;  it  is  a  pity  there  is  no  scaf- 
folding round  a  human  baby.  One  seems  to 
168 


THE   WINGS    OF    STONE 

see  domestic  life  as  the  daring  and  ambitious 
thing  that  it  is,  when  one  looks  at  those  open 
staircases  and  empty  chambers,  those  spirals  of 
wind  and  open  halls  of  sky.  Ibsen  said  that  the 
art  of  domestic  drama  was  merely  to  knock  one 
wall  out  of  the  four  walls  of  a  drawing-room.  I 
find  the  drawing-room  even  more  impressive 
when  all  four  walls  are  knocked  out. 

I  have  never  understood  what  people  mean  by 
domesticity  being  tame;  it  seems  to  me  one  of 
the  wildest  of  adventures.  But  if  you  wish  to 
see  how  high  and  harsh  and  fantastic  an  ad- 
venture it  is,  consider  only  the  actual  structure 
of  a  house  itself.  A  man  may  march  up  in  a 
rather  bored  way  to  bed;  but  at  least  he  is 
mounting  to  a  height  from  which  he  could  kill 
himself.  Every  rich,  silent,  padded  staircase, 
with  banisters  of  oak,  stair-rods  of  brass,  and 
busts  and  settees  on  every  landing,  every  such 
staircase  is  truly  only  an  awful  and  naked  lad- 
der running  up  into  the  Infinite  to  a  deadly 
height.  The  millionaire  who  stumps  up  inside 
the  house  is  really  doing  the  same  thing  as  the 
169 


THE   WINGS   OF   STONE 

tiler  or  roof-mender  who  climbs  up  outside  the 
house ;  they  are  both  mounting  up  into  the  void. 
They  are  both  making  an  escalade  of  the  intense 
inane.  Each  is  a  sort  of  domestic  mountaineer ; 
he  is  reaching  a  point  from  which  mere  idle  fall- 
ing will  kill  a  man ;  and  life  is  always  worth  liv- 
ing while  men  feel  that  they  may  die. 

I  cannot  understand  people  at  present  mak- 
ing such  a  fuss  about  flying  ships  and  aviation, 
when  men  ever  since  Stonehenge  and  the  Pyra- 
mids have  done  something  so  much  more  wild 
than  flying.  A  grasshopper  can  go  astonish- 
ingly high  up  in  the  air ;  his  biological  limitation 
and  weakness  is  that  he  cannot  stop  there. 
Hosts  of  unclean  birds  and  crapulous  insects 
can  pass  through  the  sky,  but  they  cannot  pass 
any  communication  between  it  and  the  earth. 
But  the  army  of  man  has  advanced  vertically 
into  infinity,  and  not  been  cut  off^.  It  can  estab- 
lish outposts  in  the  ether,  and  yet  keep  open 
behind  it  its  erect  and  insolent  road.  It  would 
be  grand  (as  in  Jules  Verne)  to  fire  a  cannon- 
ball  at  the  moon ;  but  would  it  not  be  grander 
170 


THE   WINGS   OF   STONE 

to  build  a  railway  to  the  moon?  Yet  every 
building  of  brick  or  wood  is  a  hint  of  that  high 
railroad ;  every  chimney  points  to  some  star,  and 
every  tower  is  a  Tower  of  Babel.  Man  rising 
on  these  awful  and  unbroken  wings  of  stone 
seems  to  me  more  majestic  and  more  mystic  than 
man  fluttering  for  an  instant  on  wings  of  can- 
vas and  sticks  of  steel.  How  sublime  and,  in- 
deed, almost  dizzy  is  the  thought  of  these  veiled 
ladders  on  which  we  all  live,  like  climbing  mon- 
keys !  Many  a  black-coated  clerk  in  a  flat  may 
comfort  himself  for  his  sombre  garb  by  reflecting 
that  he  is  like  some  lonely  rook  in  an  immemorial 
elm.  Many  a  wealthy  bachelor  on  the  top  floor 
of  a  pile  of  mansions  should  look  forth  at  morn- 
ing and  try  (if  possible)  to  feel  like  an  eagle 
whose  nest  just  clings  to  the  edge  of  some  awful 
cliff.  How  sad  that  the  word  "  giddy  "  is  used 
to  imply  wantonness  or  levity!  It  should  be  a 
high  compliment  to  a  man's  exalted  spiritual- 
ity and  the  imagination  to  say  he  is  a  little 
giddy. 

I  strolled  slowly  back  across  the  stretch  of 
171 


THE   WINGS    OF    STONE 

turf  by  the  sunset,  a  field  of  the  cloth  of  gold. 
As  I  drew  near  my  own  house,  its  huge  size  began 
to  horrify  me;  and  when  I  came  to  the  porch 
of  it  I  discovered  with  an  incredulity  as  strong 
as  despair  that  my  house  was  actually  bigger 
than  myself.  A  minute  or  two  before  there 
might  well  have  seemed  to  be  a  monstrous  and 
mythical  competition  about  which  of  the  two 
should  swallow  the  other.  But  I  was  Jonah; 
my  house  was  the  huge  and  hungry  fish;  and 
even  as  its  jaws  darkened  and  closed  about  me  I 
had  again  this  dreadful  fancy  touching  the  dizzy 
altitude  of  all  the  works  of  man.  I  climbed  the 
stairs  stubbornly,  planting  each  foot  with  sav- 
age care,  as  if  ascending  a  glacier.  When  I  got 
to  a  landing  I  was  wildly  relieved,  and  waved 
my  hat.  The  very  word  "  landing  "  has  about 
it  the  wild  sound  of  some  one  washed  up  by  the 
sea.  I  climbed  each  flight  like  a  ladder  in  naked 
sky.  The  walls  all  round  me  failed  and  faded 
into  infinity;  I  went  up  the  ladder  to  my  bed- 
room as  Montrose  went  up  the  ladder  to  the 
gallows ;  sic  itwr  ad  astra.  Do  you  think  this 
172 


THE   WINGS   OF   STONE 

is  a  little  fantastic — even  a  little  fearful  and 
nervous  ?  Believe  me,  it  is  only  one  of  the  wild 
and  wonderful  things  that  one  can  learn  by 
stopping  at  home. 


173 


THE    THREE    KINDS    OF    MEN 

Roughly  speaking,  there  are  three  kinds  of  peo- 
ple in  this  world.  The  first  kind  of  people  are 
People;  they  are  the  largest  and  probably  the 
most  valuable  class.  We  owe  to  this  class  the 
chairs  we  sit  down  on,  the  clothes  we  wear,  the 
houses  we  live  in;  and,  indeed  (when  we  come  to 
think  of  it),  we  probably  belong  to  this  class 
ourselves.  The  second  class  may  be  called  for 
convenience  the  Poets ;  they  are  often  a  nuisance 
to  their  families,  but,  generally  speaking,  a 
blessing  to  mankind.  The  third  class  is  that  of 
the  Professors  or  Intellectuals;  sometimes  de- 
scribed as  the  thoughtful  people ;  and  these  are 
a  blight  and  a  desolation  both  to  their  families 
and  also  to  mankind.  Of  course,  the  classifica- 
tion sometimes  overlaps,  like  all  classification. 
Some  good  people  are  almost  poets  and  some 
bad  poets  are  almost  professors.  But  the  divi- 
sion follows  lines  of  real  psychological  cleav- 
174 


THE   THREE   KINDS   OF   MEN 

age.  I  do  not  offer  it  lightly.  It  has  been  the 
fruit  of  more  than  eighteen  minutes  of  earnest 
reflection  and  research. 

The  class  called  People  (to  which  you  and  I, 
with  no  little  pride,  attach  ourselves)  has  certain 
casual,  yet  profound,  assumptions,  which  are 
called  "  commonplaces,"  as  that  children  are 
charming,  or  that  twilight  is  sad  and  senti- 
mental, or  that  one  man  fighting  three  is  a  fine 
sight.  Now,  these  feelings  are  not  crude;  they 
are  not  even  simple.  The  charm  of  children  is 
very  subtle;  it  is  even  complex,  to  the  extent  of 
being  almost  contradictory.  It  is,  at  its  very 
plainest,  mingled  of  a  regard  for  hilarity  and  a 
regard  for  helplessness.  The  sentiment  of  twi- 
light, in  the  vulgarest  drawing-room  song  or  the 
coarsest  pair  of  sweethearts,  is,  so  far  as  it  goes, 
a  subtle  sentiment.  It  is  strangely  balanced  be- 
tween pain  and  pleasure ;  it  might  also  be  called 
pleasure  tempting  pain.  The  plunge  of  impa- 
tient chivalry  by  which  we  all  admire  a  man 
fighting  odds  is  not  at  all  easy  to  define  sep- 
arately; it  means  many  things,  pity,  dramatic 
176 


THE    THREE    KINDS   OP   MEN 

surprise,  a  desire  for  justice,  a  delight  in  ex- 
periment and  the  indeterminate.  The  ideas  of 
the  mob  are  really  very  subtle  ideas;  but  the 
mob  does  not  express  them  subtly.  In  fact,  it 
does  not  express  them  at  all,  except  on  those  oc- 
casions (now  only  too  rare)  when  it  indulges 
in  insurrection  and  massacre. 

Now,  this  accounts  for  the  otherwise  unrea- 
sonable fact  of  the  existence  of  Poets.  Poets 
are  those  who  share  these  popular  sentiments, 
but  can  so  express  them  that  they  prove  them- 
selves the  strange  and  delicate  things  that  they 
really  are.  Poets  draw  out  the  shy  ^refinement 
of  the  rabble.  Where  the  common  man  covers 
the  queerest  emotions  by  saying,  "  Rum  little 
kid,"  Victor  Hugo  will  write  ."  L'art  d'etre 
grandpere " ;  where  the  stockbroker  will  only 
say  abruptly,  "  Evenings  closing  in  now,"  Mr. 
Yeats  will  write  "  Into  the  twilight  " ;  where  the 
navvy  can  only  mutter  something  about  pluck 
and  being  "  precious  game,"  Homer  will  show 
you  the  hero  in  rags  in  his  own  hall  defying  the 
princes  at  their  banquet.  The  Poets  carry  the 
176 


THE    THREE   KINDS   OP   MEN 

popular  sentiments  to  a  keener  and  more 
splendid  pitch ;  but  let  it  always  be  remembered 
that  it  is  the  popular  sentiments  that  they  are 
carrying.  No  man  ever  wrote  any  good  poetry 
to  show  that  childhood  was  shocking,  or  that 
twilight  was  gay  and  farcical,  or  that  a  man 
was  contemptible  because  he  had  crossed  his 
single  sword  with  three.  The  people  who  main- 
tain this  are  the  Professors,  or  Prigs. 

•       .       •  •  •  • 

The  Poets  are  those  who  rise  above  the  peo- 
ple by  understanding  them.  Of  course,  most 
of  the  Poets  wrote  in  prose — Rabelais,  for  in- 
stance, and  Dickens.  The  Prigs  rise  above  the 
people  by  refusing  to  understand  them :  by  say- 
ing that  all  their  dim,  strange  preferences  are 
prejudices  and  superstitions.  The  Prigs  make 
the  people  feel  stupid ;  the  Poets  make  the  people 
feel  wiser  than  they  could  have  imagined  that 
they  were.  There  are  many  weird  elements  in 
this  situation.  The  oddest  of  all  perhaps  is  the 
fate  of  the  two  factors  in  practical  politics. 
The  Poets  who  embrace  and  admire  the  people 
177 


THE    THREE   KINDS    OF   MEN 

are  often  pelted  with  stones  and  crucified.  The 
Prigs  who  despise  the  people  are  often  loaded 
with  lands  and  crowned.  In  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, for  instance,  there  are  quite  a  number  of 
prigs,  but  comparatively  few  poets.  There  are 
no  People  there  at  all. 

By  poets,  as  I  have  said,  I  do  not  mean  peo- 
ple who  write  poetry,  or  indeed  people  who 
write  anything.  I  mean  such  people  as,  having 
culture  and  imagination,  use  them  to  understand 
and  share  the  feelings  of  their  fellows ;  as  against 
those  who  use  them  to  rise  to  what  they  call  a 
higher  plane.  Crudely,  the  poet  differs  from 
the  mob  by  his  sensibility ;  the  professor  differs 
from  the  mob  by  his  insensibility.  He  has  not 
sufficient  finesse  and  sensitiveness  to  sympathise 
with  the  mob.  His  only  notion  is  coarsely  to 
contradict  it,  to  cut  across  it,  in  accordance  with 
some  egotistical  plan  of  his  own ;  to  tell  himself 
that,  whatever  the  ignorant  say,  they  are  prob- 
ably wrong.  He  forgets  that  ignorance  often 
has  the  exquisite  intuitions  of  innocence. 
•  •  •  •  « 

178 


THE    THREE   KINDS    OF   MEN 

Let  me  take  one  example  which  may  mark  out 
the  outline  of  the  contention.  Open  the  nearest 
comic  paper  and  let  your  eye  rest  lovingly  upon 
a  joke  about  a  mother-in-law.  Now,  the  joke, 
as  presented  for  the  populace,  will  probably  be 
a  simple  joke ;  the  old  lady  will  be  tall  and  stout, 
the  hen-pecked  husband  will  be  small  and  cower- 
ing. But  for  all  that,  a  mother-in-law  is  not  a 
simple  idea.  She  is  a  very  subtle  idea.  The 
problem  is  not  that  she  is  big  and  arrogant; 
she  is  frequently  little  and  quite  extraordinarily 
nice.  The  problem  of  the  mother-in-law  is  that 
she  is  like  the  twilight:  half  one  thing  and  half 
another.  Now,  this  twilight  truth,  this  fine  and 
even  tender  embarrassment,  might  be  rendered, 
as  it  really  is,  by  a  poet,  only  here  the  poet 
would  have  to  be  some  very  penetrating  and  sin- 
cere novelist,  like  George  Meredith,  or  Mr.  H. 
G.  Wells,  whose  "  Ann  Veronica  "  I  have  just 
been  reading  with  delight.  I  would  trust  the 
fine  poets  and  novelists  because  they  follow  the 
fairy  clue  given  them  in  Cormc  Cuts.  But  sup- 
pose the  Professor  appears,  and  suppose  he  says 
179 


THE    THREE   KINDS   OF   MEN 

(as  he  almost  certainly  will),  "A  mother-in- 
law  is  merely  a  fellow-citizen.  Considerations 
of  sex  should  not  interfere  with  comradeship. 
Regard  for  age  should  not  influence  the  in- 
tellect. A  mother-in-law  is  merely  Another 
Mind.  We  should  free  ourselves  from  these 
tribal  hierarchies  and  degrees."  Now,  when 
the  Professor  says  this  (as  he  always  does),  I 
say  to  him,  "  Sir,  you  are  coarser  than  Comic 
Cuts.  You  are  more  vulgar  and  blundering 
than  the  most  elephantine  music-hall  artiste. 
You  are  blinder  and  grosser  than  the  mob. 
These  vulgar  knockabouts  have,  at  least,  got 
hold  of  a  social  shade  and  real  mental  distinc- 
tion, though  they  can  only  express  it  clumsily. 
You  are  so  clumsy  that  you  cannot  get  hold  of 
it  at  all.  If  you  really  cannot  see  that  the 
bridegroom's  mother  and  the  bride  have  any  rea- 
son for  constraint  or  diffidence,  then  you  are 
neither  polite  nor  humane;  you  have  no 
sympathy  in  you  for  the  deep  and  doubtful 
hearts  of  human  folk."  It  is  better  even  to 
put  the  difliculty  as  the  vulgar  put  it  than 
180 


THE    THREE    KINDS    OF   MEN 

to  be  pertly  unconscious  of  the  difficulty  alto- 
gether. 

The  same  question  might  be  considered  well 
enough  in  the  old  proverb  that  two  is  company 
and  three  is  none.  This  proverb  is  the  truth 
put  popularly:  that  is,  it  is  the  truth  put 
wrong.  Certainly  it  is  untrue  that  three  is  no 
company.  Three  is  splendid  company :  three  is 
the  ideal  number  for  pure  comradeship :  as  in  the 
Three  Musketeers.  But  if  you  reject  the 
proverb  altogether;  if  you  say  that  two  and 
three  are  the  same  sort  of  company ;  if  you  can- 
not see  that  there  is  a  wider  abyss  between  two 
and  three  than  between  three  and  three  million 
— then  I  regret  to  inform  you  that  you  belong 
to  the  Third  Class  of  human  beings ;  that  you 
shall  have  no  company  either  of  two  or  three,  but 
shall  be  alone  in  a  howling  desert  till  you  die. 


181 


THE    STEWARD    OF    THE    CHIL- 
TERN    HUNDREDS 

The  other  day  on  a  stray  spur  of  the  Chlltem 
Hills  I  climbed  up  upon  one  of  those  high, 
abrupt,  windy  churchyards  from  which  the  dead 
seem  to  look  down  upon  all  the  living.  It  was  a 
mountain  of  ghosts  as  Olympus  was  a  mountain 
of  gods.  In  that  church  lay  the  bones  of  great 
Puritan  lords,  of  a  time  when  most  of  the  power 
of  England  was  Puritan,  even  of  the  Established 
Church.  And  below  these  uplifted  bones  lay 
the  huge  and  hollow  valleys  of  the  English  coun- 
tryside, where  the  motors  went  by  every  now 
and  then  like  meteors,  where  stood  out  in  white 
squares  and  oblongs  in  the  chequered  forest 
many  of  the  country  seats  even  of  those  same 
families  now  dulled  with  wealth  or  decayed  with 
Toryism.  And  looking  over  that  deep  green 
prospect  on  that  luminous  yellow  evening,  a 
lovely  and  austere  thought  came  into  my  mind, 
182 


THE    STEWARD   OF   CHILTERN 

a  thought  as  beautiful  as  the  green  wood  and  as 
grave  as  the  tombs.  The  thought  was  this: 
that  I  should  like  to  go  into  Parliament,  quarrel 
with  my  party,  accept  the  Stewardship  of  the 
Chiltern  Hundreds,  and  then  refuse  to  give  it 
up. 

We  are  so  proud  in  England  of  our  crazy  con- 
stitutional anomalies  that  I  fancy  that  very  few 
readers  indeed  will  need  to  be  told  about  the 
Steward  of  the  Chiltern  Hundreds.  But  in  case 
there  should  be  here  or  there  one  happy  man 
who  has  never  heard  of  such  twisted  tomfool- 
eries, I  will  rapidly  remind  you  what  this  legal 
fiction  is.  As  it  is  quite  a  voluntary,  sometimes 
even  an  eager,  affair  to  get  into  Parliament, 
you  would  naturally  suppose  that  it  would  be 
also  a  voluntary  matter  to  get  out  again.  You 
would  think  your  fellow-members  would  be  in- 
different, or  even  relieved  to  see  you  go;  espe- 
cially as  (by  another  exercise  of  the  shrewd,  il- 
logical old  English  common  sense)  they  have 
carefully  built  the  room  too  small  for  the  people 
who  have  to  sit  in  it.  But  not  so,  my  pippins, 
183 


THE   STEWARD   OF   CHILTERN 

as  it  says  in  the  "  Iliad."  If  you  are  merely  a 
member  of  Parliament  (Lord  knows  why)  you 
can't  resign.  But  if  you  are  a  Minister  of  the 
Crown  (Lord  knows  why)  you  can.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  get  into  the  Ministry  in  order  to  get 
out  of  the  House;  and  they  have  to  give  you 
some  office  that  doesn't  exist  or  that  nobody  else 
wants  and  thus  unlock  the  door.  So  you  go  to 
the  Prime  Minister,  concealing  your  air  of 
fatigue,  and  say,  "  It  has  been  the  ambition  of 
my  life  to  be  Steward  of  the  Chiltern  Hun- 
dreds." The  Prime  Minister  then  replies,  "  I 
can  imagine  no  man  more  fitted  both  morally 
and  mentally  for  that  high  office."  He  then 
gives  it  you,  and  you  hurriedly  leave,  reflecting 
how  the  republics  of  the  Continent  reel  anarchic- 
ally  to  and  fro  for  lack  of  a  little  solid  English 
directness  and  simplicity. 

Now,  the  thought  that  struck  me  like  a  thun- 
derbolt as  I  sat  on  the  Chiltern  slope  was  that  I 
would  like  to  get  the  Prime  Minister  to  give  me 
the   Chiltern  Hundreds,  and  then  startle  and 
184 


THE    STEWARD   OF   CHILTERN 

disturb  him  by  showing  the  utmost  interest  in 
my  work.  I  should  profess  a  general  knowledge 
of  my  duties,  but  wish  to  be  instructed  in  the  de- 
tails. I  should'  ask  to  see  the  Under-Steward 
and  the  Under-Under-Steward,  and  all  the  fine 
staff  of  experienced  permanent  officials  who  are 
the  glory  of  this  department.  And,  indeed,  my 
enthusiasm  would  not  be  wholly  unreal.  For  as 
far  as  I  can  recollect  the  original  duties  of  a 
Steward  of  the  Chiltern  Hundreds  were  to  put 
down  the  outlaws  and  brigands  in  that  part  of 
the  world.  Well,  there  are  a  great  many  out- 
laws and  brigands  in  that  part  of  the  world 
still,  and  though  their  methods  have  so  largely 
altered  as  to  require  a  corresponding  alteration 
in  the  tactics  of  the  Steward,  I  do  not  see  why 
an  energetic  and  public-spirited  Steward  should 
not  nab  them  yet. 

For  the  robbers  have  not  vanished  from  the 
old  high  forests  to  the  west  of  the  great  city. 
The  thieves  have  not  vanished ;  they  have  grown 
so  large  that  they  are  invisible.  You  do  not  see 
the  word  "  Asia  "  written  across  a  map  of  that 
185 


THE   STEWARD   OF   CHILTERN 

neighbourhood;  nor  do  you  see  the  word 
"  Thief "  written  across  the  countrysides  of 
England;  though  it  is  really  written  in  equally 
large  letters.  I  know  men  governing  despot- 
ically great  stretches  of  that  country,  whose 
every  step  in  life  has  been  such  that  a  slip  would 
have  sent  them  to  Dartmoor;  but  they  trod 
along  the  high  hard  wall  between  right  and 
wrong,  the  wall  as  sharp  as  a  sword-edge,  as 
softly  and  craftily  and  lightly  as  a  cat.  The 
vastness  of  their  silent  violence  itself  obscured 
what  they  were  at ;  if  they  seem  to  stand  for  the 
rights  of  property  it  is  really  because  they  have 
so  often  invaded  them.  And  if  they  do  not 
break  the  laws,  it  is  only  because  they  make 
them. 

But  after  all  we  only  need  a  Steward  of  the 
Chiltern  Hundreds  who  really  understands  cats 
and  thieves.  Men  hunt  one  animal  differently 
from  another ;  and  the  rich  could  catch  swindlers 
as  dexterously  as  they  catch  otters  or  antlered 
deer  if  they  were  really  at  all  keen  upon  doing 
186 


THE   STEWARD   OF   CHILTERN 

it.  But  then  they  never  have  an  uncle  with 
antlers ;  nor  a  personal  friend  who  is  an  otter. 
When  some  of  the  great  lords  that  lie  in  the 
churchyard  behind  me  went  out  against  their  foes 
in  those  deep  woods  beneath  I  wager  that  they 
had  bows  against  the  bows  of  the  outlaws,  and 
spears  against  the  spears  of  the  robber  knights. 
They  knew  what  they  were  about;  they  fought 
the  evildoers  of  their  age  with  the  weapons  of 
their  age.  If  the  same  common  sense  were  ap- 
plied to  commercial  law,  in  forty-eight  hours  it 
would  be  all  over  with  the  American  Trusts  and 
the  African  forward  finance.  But  it  will  not 
be  done:  for  the  governing  class  either  does  not 
care,  or  cares  very  much,  for  the  criminals; 
and  as  for  me,  I  had  a  delusive  opportunity  of 
being  Constable  of  Beaconsfield  (with  grossly 
inadequate  powers),  but  I  fear  I  shall  never 
really  be  Steward  of  the  Chiltern  Hundreds. 


187 


THE    FIELD    OF     BLOOD 

In  my  daily  paper  this  morning  I  read  the  fol- 
lowing interesting  paragraphs,  which  take  my 
mind  back  to  an  England  which  I  do  not  remem- 
ber and  which,  therefore  (perhaps),  I  admire. 

"  Nearly  sixty  years  ago — on  4  September, 
1850 — ^the  Austrian  General  Haynau,  who  had 
gained  an  unenviable  fame  throughout  the  world 
by  his  ferocious  methods  in  suppressing  the 
Hungarian  revolution  in  1849,  while  on  a  visit 
to  this  country,  was  belaboured  in  the  streets  of 
London  by  the  draymen  of  Messrs.  Barclay, 
Perkins  and  Co.,  whose  brewery  he  had  just  in- 
spected in  company  of  an  adjutant.  Popular 
delight  was  so  great  that  the  Government  of  the 
time  did  not  dare  to  prosecute  the  assailants, 
and  the  General — the  '  women-flogger,'  as  he  was 
called  by  the  people — ^had  to  leave  these  shores 
without  remedy. 

188 


THE   FIELD   OF  BLOOD 

"  He  returned  to  his  own  country  and  settled 
upon  his  estate  at  Szekeres,  which  is  close  to  the 
commune  above-mentioned.  By  his  will  the 
estate  passed  to  his  daughter,  after  whose  death 
it  was  to  be  presented  to  the  commune.  This 
daughter  has  just  died,  but  the  Communal  Coun- 
cil, after  much  deliberation,  has  declined  to  ac- 
cept the  gift,  and  ordered  that  the  estate  should 
be  left  to  fall  out  of  cultivation,  and  be  called 
the  '  Bloody  Meadow.'  " 

Now  that  is  an  example  of  how  things  happen 
under  an  honest  democratical  impulse.  I  do  not 
dwell  specially  on  the  earlier  part  of  the  story, 
though  the  earlier  part  of  the  story  is  astonish- 
ingly interesting.  It  recalls  the  days  when 
Englishmen  were  potential  fighters ;  that  is,  po- 
tential rebels.  It  is  not  for  lack  of  agonies  of 
intellectual  anger :  the  Sultan  and  the  late  King 
Leopold  have  been  denounced  as  heartily  as 
General  Haynau.  But  I  doubt  if  they  would 
have  been  physically  thrashed  in  the  London 
streets. 

189 


THE   FIELD   OF  BLOOD 

It  IS  not  the  tyrants  that  are  lackingf  but  the 
draymen.  Nevertheless,  it  is  not  upon  the  his- 
toric heroes  of  Barclay,  Perkins  and  Co.,  that 
I  build  all  my  hope.  Fine  as  it  was,  it  was  not 
a  full  and  perfect  revolution.  A  brewer's  dray- 
man beating  an  eminent  European  General  with 
a  stick,  though  a  singularly  bright  and  pleas- 
ing vision,  is  not  a  complete  one.  Only  when 
the  brewer's  drayman  beats  the  brewer  with  a 
stick  shall  we  see  the  clear  and  radiant  sunrise 
of  British  self-government.  The  fun  will  really 
start  when  we  begin  to  thump  the  oppressors  of 
England  as  well  as  the  oppressors  of  Hungary. 
It  is,  however,  a  definite  decline  in  the  spiritual 
character  of  draymen  that  now  they  can  thump 
neither  one  nor  the  other. 

But,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  my  real 
quarrel  is  not  about  the  first  part  of  the  extract, 
but  about  the  second.  Whether  or  no  the  dray- 
men of  Barclay  and  Perkins  have  degenerated, 
the  Commune  which  includes  Szekeres  has  not 
degenerated.  By  the  way,  the  Commune  which 
190 


THE   FIELD    OF   BLOOD 

includes  Szekeres  is  called  Kissekeres;  I  trust 
that  this  frank  avowal  will  excuse  me  from  the 
necessity  of  mentioning  either  of  these  places 
again  by  name.  The  Commune  is  still  capable 
of  performing  direct  democratic  actions,  if 
necessary,  with  a  stick. 

I  say  with  a  stick,  not  with  sticks,  for  that  is 
the  whole  argument  about  democracy.  A  peo- 
ple is  a  soul;  and  if  you  want  to  know  what  a 
soul  is,  I  can  only  answer  that  it  is  something 
that  can  sin  and  that  can  sacrifice  itself.  A  peo- 
ple can  commit  theft ;  a  people  can  confess  theft ; 
a  people  can  repent  of  theft.  That  is  the  idea 
of  the  republic.  Now,  most  modern  people 
have  got  into  their  heads  the  idea  that  democ- 
racies are  dull,  drifting  things,  a  mere  black 
swarm  or  slide  of  clerks  to  their  accustomed 
doom.  In  most  modern  novels  and  essays  it  is 
insisted  (by  way  of  contrast)  that  a  walking 
gentleman  may  have  adventures  as  he  walks. 
It  is  insisted  that  an  aristocrat  can  commit 
crimes,  because  an  aristocrat  always  cultivates 
liberty.  But,  in  truth,  a  people  can  have  ad- 
191 


THE    FIELD    OF   BLOOD 

ventures,  as  Israel  did  crawling  through  the 
desert  to  the  promised  land.  A  people  can  do 
heroic  deeds;  a  people  can  commit  crimes;  the 
French  people  did  both  in  the  Revolution;  the 
Irish  people  have  done  both  in  their  much  purer 
and  more  honourable  progress. 

But  the  real  answer  to  this  aristocratic  argu- 
ment which  seeks  to  identify  democracy  with  a 
drab  utilitarianism  may  be  found  in  action  such 
as  that  of  the  Hungarian  Commune — whose 
name  I  decline  to  repeat.  This  Commune  did 
just  one  of  those  acts  that  prove  that  a  sep- 
arate people  has  a  separate  personality ;  it  threw 
something  away.  A  man  can  throw  a  banknote 
into  the  fire.  A  man  can  fling  a  sack  of  com 
into  the  river.  The  banknote  may  be  burnt  as 
a  satisfaction  of  some  scruple ;  the  com  may  be 
destroyed  as  a  sacrifice  to  some  god.  But 
whenever  there  is  sacrifice  we  know  there  is  a 
single  will.  Men  may  be  disputatious  and 
doubtful,  may  divide  by  very  narrow  majorities 
in  their  debate  about  how  to  gain  wealth.  But 
men  have  to  be  uncommonly  unanimous  in  order 
192 


THE   FIELD   OF  BLOOD 

to  refuse  wealth.  It  wants  a  very  complete 
committee  to  burn  a  banknote  in  the  ofBce  grate. 
It  needs  a  highly  religious  tribe  really  to  throw 
corn  into  the  river.  This  self-denial  is  the 
test  and  definition  of  self-government. 

I  wish  I  could  feel  certain  that  any  English 
County  Council  or  Parish  Council  would  be 
single  enough  to  make  that  strong  gesture  of  a 
romantic  refusal;  could  say,  "no  rents  shall  be 
raised  from  this  spot;  no  grain  shall  grow  in 
this  spot;  no  good  shall  come  of  this  spot;  it 
shall  remain  sterile  for  a  sign.''  But  I  am 
afraid  they  might  answer,  like  the  eminent 
sociologist  in  the  story,  that  it  was  "  wiste  of 
spice.'' 


193 


THE    STRANGENESS    OF    LUXURY 

It  is  an  English  misfortune  that  what  is  called 
"  public  spirit  "  is  so  often  a  very  private  spirit ; 
the  legitimate  but  strictly  individual  ideals  of 
this  or  that  person  who  happens  to  have  the 
power  to  carry  them  out.  When  these  private 
principles  are  held  by  very  rich  people,  the  re- 
sult is  often  the  blackest  and  most  repulsive 
kind  of  despotism,  which  is  benevolent  despotism. 
Obviously  it  is  the  public  which  ought  to  have 
public  spirit.  But  in  this  country  and  at  this 
epoch  this  is  exactly  what  it  has  not  got.  We 
shall  have  a  public  washhouse  and  a  public 
kitchen  long  before  we  have  a  public  spirit;  in 
fact,  if  we  had  a  public  spirit  we  might  very 
probably  do  without  the  other  things.  But  if 
England  were  properly  and  naturally  governed 
by  the  English,  one  of  the  first  results  would 
probably  be  this:  that  our  standard  of  excess 
or  defect  in  property  would  be  changed  from 
194 


STRANGENESS    OF   LUXURY 

that  of  the  plutocrat  to  that  of  the  moderately 
needy  man.  That  is,  that  while  property  might 
be  strictly  respected,  everything  that  is  neces- 
sary to  a  clerk  would  be  felt  and  considered  on 
quite  a  different  plane  from  anything  which  is 
a  very  great  luxury  to  a  clerk.  This  sane  dis- 
tinction of  sentiment  is  not  instinctive  at  pres- 
ent, because  our  standard  of  life  is  that  of  the 
governing  class,  which  is  eternally  turning  lux- 
uries into  necessities  as  fast  as  pork  is  turned 
into  sausages ;  and  which  cannot  remember  the 
beginning  of  its  needs  and  cannot  get  to  the  end 
of  its  novelties. 

Take,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  the  case  of 
the  motor.  Doubtless  the  duke  now  feels  it  as 
necessary  to  have  a  motor  as  to  have  a  roof ;  and 
in  a  little  while  he  may  feel  it  equally  necessary 
to  have  a  flying  ship.  But  this  does  not  prove 
(as  the  reactionary  sceptics  always  argue)  that 
a  motor  really  is  just  as  necessary  as  a  roof.  It 
only  proves  that  a  man  can  get  used  to  an  arti- 
ficial life:  it  does  not  prove  that  there  is  no 
natural  life  for  him  to  get  used  to.  In  the 
196 


STRANGENESS   OF   LUXURY 

broad  bird's-eye  view  of  common  sense  there 
abides  a  huge  disproportion  between  the  need 
for  a  roof  and  the  need  for  an  aeroplane;  and 
no  rush  of  inventions  can  ever  alter  it.  The 
only  difference  is  that  things  are  now  judged 
by  the  abnormal  needs,  when  they  might  be 
judged  merely  by  the  normal  needs.  The 
best  aristocrat  sees  the  situation  from  an 
aeroplane.  The  good  citizen,  in  his  loftiest 
moments,  goes  no  further  than  seeing  it  from 
the  roof. 

It  is  not  true  that  luxury  is  merely  relative. 
It  is  not  true  that  it  is  only  an  expensive  nov- 
elty which  we  may  afterwards  come  to  think  a 
necessity.  Luxury  has  a  firm  philosophical 
meaning ;  and  where  there  is  a  real  public  spirit 
luxury  is  generally  allowed  for,  sometimes  re- 
buked, but  always  recognised  instantly.  To 
the  healthy  soul  there  is  something  in  the  very 
nature  of  certain  pleasures  which  warns  us  that 
they  are  exceptions,  and  that  if  they  be- 
come rules  they  will  become  very  tyrannical 
rules. 

196 


STRANGENESS   OF   LUXURY 

Take  a  harassed  seamstress  out  of  the  Harrow 
Road  and  give  her  one  lightning  hour  in  a 
motor-car,  and  she  will  probably  feel  it  as 
splendid,  but  strange,  rare,  and  even  terrible. 
But  this  is  not  (as  the  relativists  say)  merely 
because  she  has  never  been  in  a  car  before.  She 
has  never  been  in  the  middle  of  a  Somerset  cow- 
slip meadow  before ;  but  if  you  put  her  there  she 
does  not  think  it  terrifying  or  extraordinary, 
but  merely  pleasant  and  free  and  a  little  lonely. 
She  does  not  think  the  motor  monstrous  because 
it  is  new.  She  thinks  it  monstrous  because  she 
has  eyes  in  her  head;  she  thinks  it  monstrous 
because  it  is  monstrous.  That  is,  her  mothers 
and  grandmothers,  and  the  whole  race  by  whose 
life  she  lives,  have  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a 
roughly  recognisable  mode  of  living:  sitting  in 
a  green  field  was  a  part  of  it ;  travelling  as  quick 
as  a  cannon  ball  was  not.  And  we  should  not 
look  down  on  the  seamstress  because  she  mechan- 
ically emits  a  short  sharp  scream  whenever  the 
motor  begins  to  move.  On  the  contrary,  we 
ought  to  look  up  to  the  seamstress,  and  regard 
197 


STRANGENESS   OF   LUXURY 

her  cry  as  a  kind  of  mystic  omen  or  revelation 
of  nature,  as  the  old  Goths  used  to  consider  the 
howls  emitted  by  chance  females  when  annoyed. 
For  that  ritual  yell  is  really  a  mark  of  moral 
health — of  swift  response  to  the  stimulations 
and  changes  of  life.  The  seamstress  is  wiser 
than  all  the  learned  ladies,  precisely  because  she 
can  still  feel  that  a  motor  is  a  different  sort  of 
thing  from  a  meadow.  By  the  accident  of  her 
economic  imprisonment  it  is  even  possible  that 
she  may  have  seen  more  of  the  former  than  the 
latter.  But  this  has  not  shaken  her  cyclopean 
sagacity  as  to  which  is  the  natural  thing  and 
which  the  artificial.  If  not  for  her,  at  least  for 
humanity  as  a  whole,  there  is  little  doubt  about 
which  is  the  more  normally  attainable.  It  is 
considerably  cheaper  to  sit  in  a  meadow  and  see 
motors  go  by  than  to  sit  in  a  motor  and  see 
meadows  go  by. 

To  me  personally,  at  least,  it  would  never 
seem  needful  to  own  a  motor,  any  more  than  to 
own  an  avalanche.     An  avalanche,  if  you  have 
198 


STRANGENESS   OF   LUXURY 

luck,  I  am  told,  is  a  very  swift,  successful,  and 
thrilling  way  of  coming  down  a  hill.  It  is  dis- 
tinctly more  stirring,  say,  than  a  glacier,  which 
moves  an  inch  in  a  hundred  years.  But  I  do 
not  divide  these  pleasures  either  by  excitement  or 
convenience,  but  by  the  nature  of  the  thing  it- 
self. It  seems  human  to  have  a  horse  or  bicycle, 
because  it  seems  human  to  potter  about ;  and  men 
cannot  work  horses,  nor  can  bicycles  work  men, 
enormously  far  afield  of  their  ordinary  haunts 
and  affairs. 

But  about  motoring  there  is  something 
magical,  like  going  to  the  moon ;  and  I  say  the 
thing  should  be  kept  exceptional  and  felt  as 
something  breathless  and  bizarre.  My  ideal 
hero  would  own  his  horse,  but  would  have  the 
moral  courage  to  hire  his  motor.  Fairy  tales 
are  the  only  sound  guide-books  to  life ;  I  like  the 
Fairy  Prince  to  ride  on  a  white  pony  out  of  his 
father's  stables,  which  are  of  ivory  and  gold. 
But  if  in  the  course  of  his  adventures  he  finds  it 
necessary  to  travel  on  a  flaming  dragon,  I  think 
he  ought  to  give  the  dragon  back  to  the  witch 
199 


STRANGENESS   OF   LUXURY 

at  the  end  of  the  story.     It  is  a  mistake  to  have 
dragons  about  the  place. 

•  •  •  •  • 

For  there  is  truly  an  air  of  something  weird 
about  luxury;  and  it  is  by  this  that  healthy 
human  nature  has  always  smelt  and  suspected 
it.  All  romances  that  deal  in  extreme  luxury, 
from  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  to  the  novels  of 
Ouida  and  Disraeli,  have,  it  may  be  noted,  a 
singular  air  of  dream  and  occasionally  of  night- 
mare. In  such  imaginative  debauches  there  is 
something  as  occasional  as  intoxication ;  if  that 
is  still  counted  occasional.  Life  in  those  pre- 
posterous palaces  would  be  an  agony  of  dul- 
ness ;  it  is  clear  we  are  meant  to  visit  them  only 
as  in  a  flying  vision.  And  what  is  true  of  the 
old  freaks  of  wealth,  flavour  and  fierce  colour 
and  smell,  I  would  say  also  of  the  new  freak  of 
wealth,  which  is  speed.  I  should  say  to  the 
duke,  when  I  entered  his  house  at  the  head  of 
an  armed  mob,  "  I  do  not  object  to  your  having 
exceptional  pleasures,  if  you  have  them  excep- 
tionally. I  do  not  mind  your  enjoying  the 
800 


STRANGENESS   OF   LUXURY 

strange  and  alien  energies  of  science,  if  you 
feel  them  strange  and  alien,  and  not  your  own. 
But  in  condemning  you  (under  the  Seventeenth 
Section  of  the  Eighth  Decree  of  the  Republic) 
to  hire  a  motor-car  twice  a  year  at  Margate,  I 
am  not  the  enemy  of  your  luxuries,  but,  rather, 
the  protector  of  them." 

That  is  what  I  should  say  to  the  duke.  As 
to  what  the  duke  would  say  to  me,  that  is  an- 
other matter,  and  may  well  be  deferred. 


201 


THE    TRIUMPH    OF    THE    DONKEY 

DouBTiiESs  the  unsympathetic  might  state  my 
doctrine  that  one  should  not  own  a  motor  like 
a  horse,  but  rather  use  it  like  a  flying  dragon 
in  the  simpler  form  that  I  will  always  go  mo- 
toring in  somebody  else's  car.  My  favourite 
modern  philosopher  (Mr.  W.  W.  Jacobs)  de- 
scribes a  similar  case  of  spiritual  delicacy  mis- 
understood. I  have  not  the  book  at  hand ;  but 
I  think  that  Job  Brown  was  reproaching  Bill 
Chambers  for  wasteful  drunkenness,  and  Henery 
Walker  spoke  up  for  Bill,  and  said  he  scarcely 
ever  had  a  glass  but  what  somebody  else  paid 
for  it ;  and  there  was  "  unpleasantness  all  round 
then." 

Being  less  sensitive  than  Bill  Chambers  (or 
whoever  it  was)  I  will  risk  this  rude  perversion 
of  my  meaning,  and  concede  that  I  was  in  a 
motor-car  yesterday,  and  the  motor-car  most 
certainly  was  not  my  own,  and  the  journey, 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   DONKEY 

though  it  contained  nothing  that  is  specially 
unusual  on  such  journeys,  had  running  through 
it  a  strain  of  the  grotesque  which  was  at  once 
wholesome  and  humiliating.  The  symbol  of 
that  influence  was  that  ancient  symbol  of  the 
humble  and  humorous — a  donkey. 

•  •  •  •  • 

When  first  I  saw  the  donkey  I  saw  him  in  the 
sunlight  as  the  unearthly  gargoyle  that  he  is. 
My  friend  had  met  me  in  his  car  (I  repeat 
firmly,  in  his  car)  at  the  little  painted  station 
in  the  middle  of  the  warm  wet  woods  and  hop- 
fields  of  that  western  country.  He  proposed  to 
drive  me  first  to  his  house  beyond  the  village 
before  starting  for  a  longer  spin  of  adventure, 
and  we  rattled  through  those  rich  green  lanes 
which  have  in  them  something  singularly 
analogous  to  fairy  tales ;  whether  the  lanes  pro- 
duced the  fairies  or  (as  I  believe)  the  fairies 
produced  the  lanes.  All  around  in  the  glim- 
mering hop-yards  stood  those  little  hop-kilns 
like  stunted  and  slanting  spires.  They  look 
like  dwarfish  churches — in  fact,  rather  like 
203 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   DONKEY 

many  modern  churches  I  could  mention, 
churches  all  of  them  small  and  each  of  them  a 
little  crooked.  In  this  elfin  atmosphere  we 
swung  round  a  sharp  comer  and  half-way  up  a 
steep,  white  hill,  and  saw  what  looked  at  first 
like  a  tall,  black  monster  against  the  sun.  It 
appeared  to  be  a  dark  and  dreadful  woman 
walking  on  wheels  and  waving  long  ears  like  a 
bat's.  A  second  glance  told  me  that  she  was 
not  the  local  witch  in  a  state  of  transition ;  she 
was  only  one  of  the  million  tricks  of  perspective. 
She  stood  up  in  a  small  wheeled  cart  drawn  by 
a  donkey;  the  donkey's  ears  were  just  behind 
her  head,  and  the  whole  was  black  against  the 
light. 

Perspective  is  really  the  comic  element  in 
everything.  It  has  a  pompous  Latin  name, 
but  it  is  incurably  Gothic  and  grotesque.  One 
simple  proof  of  this  is  that  it  is  always  left  out 
of  all  dignified  and  decorative  art.  There  is 
no  perspective  in  the  Elgin  Marbles,  and  even 
the  essentially  angular  angels  in  mediaeval 
stained  glass  almost  always  ( as  it  says  in  "  Pa- 
204 


TRIUMPH  OP   THE   DONKEY 

tience  ")  contrive  to  look  both  angular  and  flat. 
There  is  something  intrinsically  disproportion- 
ate and  outrageous  in  the  idea  of  the  distant  ob- 
jects dwindling  and  growing  dwarfish,  the  closer 
objects  swelling  enormous  and  intolerable. 
There  is  something  frantic  in  the  notion  that 
one's  own  father  by  walking  a  little  way  can 
be  changed  by  a  blast  of  magic  to  a  pigmy. 
There  is  something  farcical  in  the  fancy  that 
Nature  keeps  one's  uncle  in  an  infinite  number 
of  sizes,  according  to  where  he  is  to  stand.  All 
soldiers  in  retreat  turn  into  tin  soldiers;  all 
bears  in  rout  into  toy  bears;  as  if  on  the  ul- 
timate horizon  of  the  world  everything  was  sar- 
donically doomed  to  stand  up  laughable  and 
little  against  heaven. 

.  a  •  •  • 

It  was  for  this  reason  that  the  old  woman 
and  her  donkey  struck  us  first  when  seen  from 
behind  as  one  black  grotesque.  I  afterwards 
had  the  chance  of  seeing  the  old  woman,  the 
cart,  and  the  donkey  fairly,  in  flank  and  in  all 
their  length.  I  saw  the  old  woman  and  the 
206 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   DONKEY 

donkey  passant,  as  they  might  have  appeared 
heraldically  on  the  shield  of  some  heroic  family. 
I  saw  the  old  woman  and  the  donkey  dignified, 
decorative,  and  flat,  as  they  might  have  marched 
across  the  Elgin  Marbles.  Seen  thus  under  an 
equal  light,  there  was  nothing  specially  ugly 
about  them;  the  cart  was  long  and  sufficiently 
comfortable;  the  donkey  was  stolid  and  suf- 
ficiently respectable;  the  old  woman  was  lean 
but  sufficiently  strong,  and  even  smiling  in  a 
sour,  rustic  manner.  But  seen  from  behind 
they  looked  like  one  black  monstrous  animal; 
the  dark  donkey  ears  seemed  like  dreadful  wings, 
and  the  tall  dark  back  of  the  woman,  erect  like 
a  tree,  seemed  to  grow  taller  and  taller  until  one 
could  almost  scream. 

Then  we  went  by  her  with  a  blasting  roar  like 
a  railway  train,  and  fled  far  from  her  over  the 
brow  of  the  hill  to  my  friend's  home. 

There  we  paused  only  for  my  friend  to  stock 

the  car  with  some  kind  of  picnic  paraphernalia, 

and  so  started  again,  as  it  happened,  by  the 

way  we  had  come.     Thus  it  fell  that  we  went 

206 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   DONKEY 

shattering  down  that  short,  sharp  hill  again  be- 
fore the  poor  old  woman  and  her  donkey  had 
managed  to  crawl  to  the  top  of  it;  and  seeing 
them  under  a  different  light,  I  saw  them  very 
differently.  Black  against  the  sun,  they  had 
seemed  comic;  but  bright  against  greenwood 
and  grey  cloud,  they  were  not  comic  but  tragic ; 
for  there  are  not  a  few  things  that  seem  fan- 
tastic in  the  twilight,  and  in  the  sunlight  are 
sad.  I  saw  that  she  had  a  grand,  gaunt  mask 
of  ancient  honour  and  endurance,  and  wide 
eyes  sharpened  to  two  shining  points,  as  if 
looking  for  that  small  hope  on  the  horizon  of 
human  life.  I  also  saw  that  her  cart  contained 
carrots. 

"  Don't  you  feel,  broadly  speaking,  a  beast,'' 
I  asked  my  friend,  "  when  you  go  so  easily  and 
so  fast  ?  "  For  we  had  crashed  by  so  that  the 
crazy  cart  must  have  thrilled  in  every  stick  of  it. 

My  friend  was  a  good  man,  and  said,  "  Yes. 
But  I  don't  think  it  would  do  her  any  good  if  I 
went  slower." 

"  No,"  I  assented  after  reflection.  "  Per- 
207 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   DONKEY 

haps  the  only  pleasure  we  can  give  to  her  or  any 
one  else  is  to  get  out  of  their  sight  very  soon.'* 
My  friend  availed  himself  of  this  advice  in  no 
niggard  spirit;  I  felt  as  if  we  were  fleeing  for 
our  lives  in  throttling  fear  after  some  frightful 
atrocity.  In  truth,  there  is  only  one  differ- 
ence left  between  the  secrecy  of  the  two  social 
classes:  the  poor  hide  themselves  in  darkness 
and  the  rich  hide  themselves  in  distance.  They 
both  hide. 

•  •  •  •  • 

As  we  shot  like  a  lost  boat  over  a  cataract 
down  into  a  whirlpool  of  white  roads  far  below, 
I  saw  afar  a  black  dot  crawling  like  an  insect. 
I  looked  again :  I  could  hardly  believe  it.  There 
was  the  slow  old  woman,  with  her  slow  old 
donkey,  still  toiling  along  the  main  road.  I 
asked  my  friend  to  slacken,  but  when  he  said  of 
the  car,  "  She's  wanting  to  go,"  I  knew  it  was 
all  up  with  him.  For  when  you  have  called  a 
thing  female  you  have  yielded  to  it  utterly. 
We  passed  the  old  woman  with  a  shock  that 
must  have  shaken  the  earth:  if  her  head  did 
208 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   DONKEY 

not  reel  and  her  heart  quail,  I  know  not  what 
they  were  made  of.  And  when  we  had  fled 
perilously  on  in  the  gathering  dark,  spuming 
hamlets  behind  us,  I  suddenly  called  out,  "  Why, 
what  asses  we  are !  Why,  it's  She  that  is  brave 
— she  and  the  donkey.  We  are  safe  enough; 
we  are  artillery  and  plate-armour:  and  she 
stands  up  to  us  with  matchwood  and  a  snail! 
If  yoii  had  grown  old  in  a  quiet  valley,  and  peo- 
ple began  firing  cannon-balls  as  big  as  cabs  at 
you  in  your  seventieth  year,  wouldn't  you  jump 
— and  she  never  moved  an  eyelid.  Oh!  we  go 
very  fast  and  very  far,  no  doubt " 

As  I  spoke  came  a  curious  noise,  and  my 
friend,  instead  of  going  fast,  began  to  go  very 
slow;  then  he  stopped;  then  he  got  out.  Then 
he  said,  "  And  I  left  the  Stepney  behind." 

The  grey  moths  came  out  of  the  wood  and  the 
yellow  stars  came  out  to  crown  it,  as  my  friend, 
with  the  lucidity  of  despair,  explained  to  me  (on 
the  soundest  scientific  principles,  of  course)  that 
nothing  would  be  any  good  at  all.  We  must 
sleep  the  night  in  the  lane,  except  in  the  very 
209 


TRIUMPH   OP   THE   DONKEY 

unlikely  event  of  some  one  coming  by  to  carry 
a  message  to  some  town.  Twice  I  thought  I 
heard  some  tiny  sound  of  such  approach,  and 
it  died  away  like  wind  in  the  trees,  and  the  mo- 
torist was  already  asleep  when  I  heard  it  re- 
newed and  realised  Something  certainly  was 
approaching.  I  ran  up  the  road — and  there  it 
was.  Yes,  It — and  She.  Thrice  had  she  come, 
once  comic  and  once  tragic  and  once  heroic. 
And  when  she  came  again  it  was  as  if  in  pardon 
on  a  pure  errand  of  prosaic  pity  and  relief.  I 
am  quite  serious.  I  do  not  want  you  to  laugh. 
It  is  not  the  first  time  a  donkey  has  been  re- 
ceived seriously,  nor  one  riding  a  donkey  with 
respect. 


210 


THE    WHEEL 

In  a  quiet  and  rustic  though  fairly  famous 
church  in  my  neighbourhood  there  is  a  window 
supposed  to  represent  an  Angel  on  a  Bicycle.  It 
does  definitely  and  indisputably  represent  a 
nude  youth  sitting  on  a  wheel;  but  there  is 
enough  complication  in  the  wheel  and  sanctity 
(I  suppose)  in  the  youth  to  warrant  this  work- 
ing description.  It  is  a  thing  of  florid 
Renascence  outline,  and  belongs  to  the  highly 
pagan  period  which  introduced  all  sorts  of  ob- 
jects into  ornament:  personally  I  can  believe 
in  the  bicycle  more  than  in  the  angel.  Men, 
they  say,  are  now  imitating  angels;  in  their 
flying-machines,  that  is:  not  in  any  other  re- 
spect that  I  have  heard  of.  So  perhaps  the 
angel  on  the  bicycle  (if  he  is  an  angel  and  if  it 
is  a  bicycle)  was  avenging  himself  by  imitating 
man.  If  so,  he  showed  that  high  order  of  in- 
tellect which  is  attributed  to  angels  in  the 
211 


THE   WHEEL 

mediaeval  books,  though  not  always  (perhaps) 
in  the  mediaeval  pictures. 

For  wheels  are  the  mark  of  a  man  quite  as 
much  as  wings  are  the  mark  of  an  angel. 
Wheels  are  the  things  that  are  as  old  as  man- 
kind and  yet  are  strictly  peculiar  to  man;  that 
are  prehistoric  but  not  pre-human. 

A  distinguished  psychologist,  who  is  well  ac- 
quainted with  physiology,  has  told  me  that  parts 
of  himself  are  certainly  levers,  while  other  parts 
are  probably  pulleys,  but  that  after  feeling 
himself  carefully  all  over,  he  cannot  find  a 
wheel  anywhere.  The  wheel,  as  a  mode  of  move- 
ment, is  a  purely  human  thing.  On  the  ancient 
escutcheon  of  Adam  (which,  like  much  of  the 
rest  of  his  costume,  has  not  yet  been  discov- 
ered) the  heraldic  emblem  was  a  wheel — passant. 
As  a  mode  of  progress,  I  say,  it  is  unique. 
Many  modern  philosophers,  like  my  friend  be- 
fore mentioned,  are  ready  to  find  links  between 
man  and  beast,  and  to  show  that  man  has  been 
in  all  things  the  blind  slave  of  his  mother  earth. 
Some,  of  a  very  different  kind,  are  even  eager  to 
218 


THE   WHEEL 

show  it;  especially  If  it  can  be  twisted  to  the 
discredit  of  religion.  But  even  the  most  eager 
scientists  have  often  admitted  in  mj  hearing 
that  they  would  be  surprised  if  some  kind  of 
cow  approached  them  moving  solemnly  on 
four  wheels.  Wings,  fins,  flappers,  claws, 
hoofs,  webs,  trotters,  with  all  these  the  fan- 
tastic families  of  the  earth  come  against 
us  and  close  around  us,  fluttering  and  flap- 
ping and  rustling  and  galloping  and  lumber- 
ing and  thundering;  but  there  is  no  sound  of 
wheels. 

I  remember  dimly,  if,  indeed,  I  remember 
aright,  that  in  some  of  those  dark  prophetic 
pages  of  Scripture,  that  seem  of  cloudy  purple 
and  dusky  gold,  there  is  a  passage  in  which  the 
seer  beholds  a  violent  dream  of  wheels.  Per- 
haps this  was  indeed  the  symbolic  declaration  of 
the  spiritual  supremacy  of  man.  Whatever 
the  birds  may  do  above  or  the  fishes  beneath  his 
ship,  man  is  the  only  thing  to  steer;  the  only 
thing  to  be  conceived  as  steering.  He  may 
ipake  the  birds  his  friends,  if  he  can.  He  may 
?1^ 


THE   WHEEL 

make  the  fishes  his  gods,  if  he  chooses.  But 
most  certainly  he  will  not  believe  a  bird  at  the 
masthead;  and  it  is  hardly  likely  that  he  will 
even  permit  a  fish  at  the  helm.  He  is,  as  Swin- 
burne says,  helmsman  and  chief:  he  is  literally 
the  Man  at  the  Wheel. 

The  wheel  is  an  animal  that  is  always  stand- 
ing on  its  head;  only  it  does  it  so  rapidly  that 
no  philosopher  has  ever  found  out  which  is  its 
head.  Or  if  the  phrase  be  felt  as  more  exact, 
it  is  an  animal  that  is  always  turning  head  over 
heels  and  progressing  by  this  principle.  Some 
fish,  I  think,  turn  head  over  heels  (supposing 
them,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  to  have  heels)  ; 
I  have  a  dog  who  nearly  did  it ;  and  I  did  it  once 
myself  when  I  was  very  small.  It  was  an  ac- 
cident ;  and,  as  that  delightful  novelist,  Mr.  De 
Morgan,  would  say,  it  never  can  happen  again. 
Since  then  no  one  has  accused  me  of  being  up- 
side down  except  mentally :  and  I  rather  think 
that  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  that ;  espe- 
cially as  typified  by  the  rotary  symbol.  A 
wheel  is  the  sublime  paradox;  one  part  of 
214 


THE   WHEEL 

it  IS  always  going  forward  and  the  other  part 
always  going  back.  Now  this,  as  it  happens, 
is  highly  similar  to  the  proper  condition  of  any 
human  soul  or  any  political  state.  Every  sane 
soul  or  state  looks  at  once  backwards  and  for- 
wards; and  even  goes  backwards  to  come 
on. 

For  those  interested  in  revolt  (as  I  am)  I 
only  say  meekly  that  one  cannot  have  a  Revolu- 
tion without  revolving.  The  wheel,  being  a 
logical  thing,  has  reference  to  what  is  behind 
as  well  as  what  is  before.  It  has  (as  every  so- 
ciety should  have)  a  part  that  perpetually  leaps 
helplessly  at  the  sky ;  and  a  part  that  perpetu- 
ally bows  down  its  head  into  the  dust.  Why 
should  people  be  so  scornful  of  us  who  stand 
on  our  heads.?  Bowing  down  one's  head  in  the 
dust  is  a  very  good  thing,  the  humble  beginning 
of  all  happiness.  When  we  have  bowed  our 
heads  in  the  dust  for  a  little  time,  the  happiness 
comes;  and  then  (leaving  our  heads  in  the  hum- 
ble and  reverent  position)  we  kick  up  our  heels 
behind  in  the  air.  That  is  the  true  origin  of 
215 


THE   WHEEL 

standing  on  one's  head;  and  the  ultimate  de- 
fence of  paradox.     The  wheel  humbles  itself  to. 
be  exalted;  only  it  does  it  a  little  quicker  than 
I  do. 


216 


FIVE    HUNDRED    AND    FIFTY-FIVE 

Life  is  full  of  a  ceaseless  shower  of  small  coin- 
cidences; too  small  to  be  worth  mentioning  ex- 
cept for  a  special  purpose,  often  too  trifling 
even  to  be  noticed,  any  more  than  we  notice  one 
snowflake  falling  on  another.  It  is  this  that 
lends  a  frightful  plausibility  to  all  false 
doctrines  and  evil  fads.  There  are  always 
such  props  of  accidental  arguments  upon 
anything.  If  I  said  suddenly  that  historical 
truth  is  generally  told  by  red-haired  men, 
I  have  no  doubt  that  ten  minutes'  reflection 
(in  which  I  decline  to  indulge)  would  pro- 
vide me  with  a  handsome  list  of  instances 
in  support  of  it.  I  remember  a  riotous 
argument  about  Bacon  and  Shakespeare 
in  which  I  off^ered  quite  at  random  to  show 
that  Lord  Rosebery  had  written  the  words 
of  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats.  No  sooner  had  I  said  the 
words  than  a  torrent  of  coincidences  rushed 
217 


FIVE   HUNDRED   FIFTY-FIVE 

upon  my  mind.  I  pointed  out,  for  instance, 
that  Mr.  Yeats^s  chief  work  was  "  The  Secret 
Rose."  This  may  easily  be  paraphrased  as 
"  The  Quiet  or  Modest  Rose  " ;  and  so,  of  course, 
as  the  Primrose.  A  second  after  I  saw  the  same 
suggestion  in  the  combination  of  "  rose "  and 
"  bury."  If  I  had  pursued  the  matter,  who 
knows  but  I  might  have  been  a  raving  maniac 
by  this  time. 

We  trip  over  these  trivial  repetitions  and  ex- 
actitudes at  every  turn,  only  they  are  too  trivial 
even  for  conversation.  A  man  named  Williams 
did  walk  into  a  strange  house  and  murder  a  man 
named  Williamson;  it  sounds  like  a  sort  of  in- 
fanticide. A  journalist  of  my  acquaintance 
did  move  quite  unconsciously  from  a  place  called 
Overstrand  to  a  place  called  Overroads.  When 
he  had  made  this  escape  he  was  very  properly 
pursued  by  a  voting  card  from  Battersea,  on 
which  a  political  agent  named  Bum  asked  him 
to  vote  for  a  political  candidate  named  Bums. 
And  when  he  did  so  another  coincidence  hap- 
pened to  him ;  rather  a  spiritual  than  a  material 
218 


FIVE   HUNDRED   FIFTY-FIVE 

coincidence;  a  mystical  thing,  a  matter  of  a 
magic  number. 

•  •  •  •  • 

For  a  sufficient  number  of  reasons,  the  man  I 
know  went  up  to  vote  in  Battersea  in  a  drifting 
and  even  dubious  frame  of  mind.  As  the  train 
slid  through  swampy  woods  and  sullen  skies 
there  came  into  his  empty  mind  those  idle  and 
yet  awful  questions  which  come  when  the  mind  is 
empty.  Fools  make  cosmic  systems  out  of  them ; 
knaves  make  profane  poems  out  of  them;  men 
try  to  crush  them  like  an  ugly  lust.  Religion  is 
only  the  responsible  reinforcement  of  common 
courage  and  common  sense.  Religion  only  sets 
up  the  normal  mood  of  health  against  the  hun- 
dred moods  of  disease. 

But  there  is  this  about  such  ghastly  empty 
enigmas,  that  they  always  have  an  answer  to  the 
obvious  answer,  the  reply  offered  by  daily  rea- 
son. Suppose  a  man's  children  have  gone  swim- 
ming; suppose  he  is  suddenly  throttled  by  the 
senseless  fear  that  they  are  drowned.  The  ob- 
vious answer  is,  "  Only  one  man  in  a  thousand 
219 


FIVE   HUNDRED   FIFTY-FIVE 

has  his  children  drowned."  But  a  deeper  voice 
(deeper,  being  as  deep  as  hell)  answers,  "And 
why  should  not  you  be  the  thousandth  man?  '' 
What  is  true  of  tragic  doubt  is  true  also  of 
trivial  doubt.  The  voter's  guardian  devil  said 
to  him,  "  If  you  don't  vote  to-day  you  can  do 
fifteen  things  which  will  quite  certainly  do  some 
good  somewhere,  please  a  friend,  please  a  child, 
please  a  maddened  publisher.  And  what  good 
do  you  expect  to  do  by  voting?  You  don't 
think  your  man  will  get  in  by  one  vote,  do 
you?  "  To  this  he  knew  the  answer  of  common 
sense,  "  But  if  everybody  said  that,  nobody 
would  get  in  at  all."  And  then  there  came  that 
deeper  voice  from  Hades,  "  But  you  are  not 
settling  what  everybody  shall  do,  but  what  one 
person  on  one  occasion  shall  do.  If  this  after- 
noon you  went  your  way  about  more  solid 
things,  how  would  it  matter  and  who  would  ever 
know? "  Yet  somehow  the  voter  drove  on 
blindly  through  the  blackening  London  roads, 
and  found  somewhere  a  tedious  polling  station 
and  recorded  his  tiny  vote. 
220 


FIVE   HUNDRED   FIFTY-FIVE 

The  politician  for  whom  the  voter  had  voted 
got  in  by  five  hundred  and  fifty-five  votes.  The 
voter  read  this  next  morning  at  breakfast,  being 
in  a  more  cheery  and  expansive  mood,  and  found 
something  very  fascinating  not  merely  in  the 
fact  of  the  majority,  but  even  in  the  form  of  it. 
There  was  something  symbolic  about  the  three 
exact  figures;  one  felt  it  might  be  a  sort  of 
motto  or  cipher.  In  the  great  book  of  seals 
and  cloudy  symbols  there  is  just  such  a  thun- 
dering repetition.  Six  hundred  and  sixty-six  was 
the  Mark  of  the  Beast.  Five  hundred  and  fifty- 
five  is  the  Mark  of  the  Man;  the  triumphant 
tribune  and  citizen.  A  number  so  symmetrical 
as  that  really  rises  out  of  the  region  of  science 
into  the  region  of  art.  It  is  a  pattern,  like  the 
egg-and-dart  ornament  or  the  Greek  key.  One 
might  edge  a  wall-paper  or  fringe  a  robe  with 
a  recurring  decimal.  And  while  the  voter  lux- 
uriated in  this  light  exactitude  of  the  numbers, 
a  thought  crossed  his  mind  and  he  almost  leapt 
to  his  feet.  "  Why,  good  heavens !  "  he  cried. 
"I  won  that  election,  and  it  was  won  by  one 
221 


FIVE   HUNDRED   FIFTY-FIVE 

vote!  But  for  me  it  would  have  been  the 
despicable,  broken-backed,  disjointed,  inhar- 
monious figure  five  hundred  and  fifty-four.  The 
whole  artistic  point  would  have  vanished.  The 
Mark  of  the  Man  would  have  disappeared  from 
history.  It  was  I  who  with  a  masterful  hand 
seized  the  chisel  and  carved  the  hieroglyph — 
complete  and  perfect.  I  clutched  the  trembling 
hand  of  Destiny  when  it  was  about  to  make  a 
dull  square  four  and  forced  it  to  make  a  nice 
curly  five.  Why,  but  for  me  the  Cosmos 
would  have  lost  a  coincidence ! "  After  this 
outburst  the  voter  sat  down  and  finished  his 
breakfast. 


E.THANDUNE 

Perhaps  you  do  not  know  where  Ethandune  is. 
Nor  do  I;  nor  does  anybody.  That  is  where 
the  somewhat  sombre  fun  begins.  I  cannot 
even  tell  you  for  certain  whether  it  is  the  name 
of  a  forest  or  a  town  or  a  hill.  I  can  only  say 
that  in  any  case  it  is  of  the  kind  that  floats 
and  is  unfixed.  If  it  is  a  forest,  it  is  one  of 
those  forests  that  march  with  a  million  legs,  like 
the  walking  trees  that  were  the  doom  of  Mac- 
beth. If  it  is  a  town,  it  is  one  of  those  towns 
that  vanish,  like  a  city  of  tents.  If  it  is  a  hill, 
it  is  a  flying  hill,  like  the  mountain  to  which 
faith  lends  wings.  Over  a  vast  dim  region  of 
England  this  dark  name  of  Ethandune  floats 
like  an  eagle  doubtful  where  to  swoop  and 
strike,  and,  indeed,  there  were  birds  of  prey 
enough  over  Ethandune,  wherever  it  was.  But 
now  Ethandune  itself  has  grown  as  dark  and 
drifting  as  the  black  drifts  of  the  birds. 


ETHANDUNE 

And  yet  without  this  word  that  you  cannot 
fit  with  a  meaning  and  hardly  with  a  memory, 
you  would  be  sitting  in  a  very  different  chair 
at  this  moment  and  looking  at  a  very  different 
tablecloth.  As  a  practical  modem  phrase  I  do 
not  commend  it;  if  my  private  critics  and  cor- 
respondents in  whom  I  delight  should  happen  to 
address  me  "  G.  K.  Chesterton,  Poste  Restante, 
Ethandune,"  I  fear  their  letters  would  not  come 
to  hand.  If  two  hurried  commercial  travellers 
should  agree  to  discuss  a  business  matter  at 
Ethandune  from  5  to  5.15,  I  am  afraid  they 
would  grow  old  in  the  district  as  white-haired 
wanderers.  To  put  it  plainly,  Ethandune  is 
anywhere  and  nowhere  in  the  western  hills ;  it  is 
an  English  mirage.  And  yet  but  for  this 
doubtful  thing  you  would  have  probably  no 
Daily  News  on  Saturday  and  certainly  no 
church  on  Sunday.  I  do  not  say  that  either  of 
these  two  things  is  a  benefit ;  but  I  do  say  that 
they  are  customs,  and  that  you  would  not  pos- 
sess them  except  through  this  mystery.  You 
would  not  have  Christmas  puddings,  nor  (prob- 
224 


ETHANDUNE 

ably)  any  puddings ;  you  would  not  have  Easter 
eggs,  probably  not  poached  eggs,  I  strongly 
suspect  not  scrambled  eggs,  and  the  best  his- 
torians are  decidedly  doubtful  about  curried 
eggs.  To  cut  a  long  story  short  (the  longest 
of  all  stories),  you  would  not  have  any  civilisa- 
tion, far  less  any  Christian  civilisation.  And 
if  in  some  moment  of  gentle  curiosity  you  wish 
to  know  why  you  are  the  polished,  sparkling, 
rounded,  and  wholly  satisfactory  citizen  which 
you  obviously  are,  then  I  can  give  you  no  more 
definite  answer  geographical  or  historical;  but 
only  toll  in  your  ears  the  tone  of  the  uncap- 
tured  name — Ethandune. 

I  will  try  to  state  quite  sensibly  why  it  Is  as 
important  as  it  is.  And  yet  even  that  is  not 
easy.  If  I  were  to  state  the  mere  fact  from  the 
history  books,  numbers  of  people  would  think 
it  equally  trivial  and  remote,  like  some  war  of 
the  Picts  and  Scots.  The  points  perhaps  might 
be  put  in  this  way.  There  is  a  certain  spirit 
in  the  world  which  breaks  everything  off  short. 
There  may  be  magnificence  in  the  smashing ;  but 
226 


ETHANDUNE 

the  thing  is  smashed.  There  may  be  a  certain 
splendour ;  but  the  splendour  is  sterile :  it  abol- 
ishes all  future  splendours.  I  mean  (to  take 
a  working  example),  York  Minster  covered  with 
flames  might  happen  to  be  quite  as  beautiful  as 
York  Minster  covered  with  carvings.  But  the 
carvings  produce  more  carvings.  The  flames 
produce  nothing  but  a  little  black  heap.  When 
any  act  has  this  cul-de-sac  quality  it  matters 
little  whether  it  is  done  by  a  book  or  a  sword, 
by  a  clumsy  battle-axe  or  a  chemical  bomb. 
The  case  is  the  same  with  ideas.  The  pessimist 
may  be  a  proud  figure  when  he  curses  all  the 
stars ;  the  optimist  may  be  an  even  prouder  fig- 
ure when  he  blesses  them  all.  But  the  real  test 
is  not  in  the  energy,  but  in  the  effect.  When 
the  optimist  has  said,  "  All  things  are  interest- 
ing," we  are  left  free;  we  can  be  interested  as 
much  or  as  little  as  we  please.  But  when  the 
pessimist  says,  "  No  things  are  interesting,''  it 
may  be  a  very  witty  remark:  but  it  is  the  last 
witty  remark  that  can  be  made  on  the  subject. 
He  has  burnt  his  cathedral ;  he  has  had  his  blaze 
226 


ETHANDUNE 

and  the  rest  is  ashes.  The  sceptics,  like  bees, 
give  their  one  sting  and  die.  The  pessimist 
must  be  wrong,  because  he  says  the  last  word. 

Now,  this  spirit  that  denies  and  that  destroys 
had  at  one  period  of  history  a  dreadful  epoch  of 
military  superiority.  They  did  bum  York 
Minster,  or  at  least,  places  of  the  same  kind. 
Roughly  speaking,  from  the  seventh  century  to 
the  tenth,  a  dense  tide  of  darkness,  of  chaos  and 
brainless  cruelty,  poured  on  these  islands  and 
on  the  western  coasts  of  the  Continent,  which 
well-nigh  cut  them  ofF  from  all  the  white  man's 
culture  for  ever.  And  this  is  the  final  human 
test;  that  the  varied  chiefs  of  that  vague  age 
were  remembered  or  forgotten  according  to  how 
they  had  resisted  this  almost  cosmic  raid.  No- 
body thought  of  the  modem  nonsense  about 
races;  everybody  thought  of  the  human  race 
and  its  highest  achievements.  Arthur  was  a 
Celt,  and  may  have  been  a  fabulous  Celt ;  but  he 
was  a  fable  on  the  right  side.  Charlemagne 
may  have  been  a  Gaul  or  a  Goth,  but  he  was  not 
a  barbarian ;  he  fought  for  the  tradition  against 
827 


ETHANDUNE 

the  barbarians,  the  nihilists.  And  for  this  rea- 
son also,  for  this  reason,  in  the  last  resort,  only, 
we  call  the  saddest  and  in  some  ways  the  least 
successful  of  the  Wessex  kings  by  the  title  of 
Alfred  the  Great.  Alfred  was  defeated  by  the 
barbarians  again  and  again;  he  defeated  the 
barbarians  again  and  again;  but  his  victories 
were  almost  as  vain  as  his  defeats.  Fortunately 
he  did  not  believe  in  the  Time  Spirit  or  the 
Trend  of  Things  or  any  such  modern  rubbish, 
and  therefore  kept  pegging  away.  But  while 
his  failures  and  his  fruitless  successes  have 
names  still  in  use  (such  as  Wilton,  Basing,  and 
Ashdown),  that  last  epic  battle  which  really 
broke  the  barbarian  has  remained  without  a 
modern  place  or  name.  Except  that  it  was 
near  Chippenham,  where  the  Danes  gave  up 
their  swords  and  were  baptised,  no  one  can  pick 
out  certainly  the  place  where  you  and  I  were 
saved  from  being  savages  for  ever. 

But  the  other  day  under  a  wild  sunset  and 
moonrise  I  passed  the  place  which  is  best  reputed 
as  Ethandune,  a  high,  grim  upland,  partly  bare 
228 


ETHANDUNE 

and  partly  shaggy ;  like  that  savage  and  sacred 
spot  in  those  great  imaginative  lines  about  the 
demon  lover  and  the  waning  moon.  The  dark- 
ness, the  red  wreck  of  sunset,  the  yellow  and 
lurid  moon,  the  long  fantastic  shadows,  actu- 
ally created  that  sense  of  monstrous  incident 
which  is  the  dramatic  side  of  landscape.  The 
bare  grey  slopes  seemed  to  rush  downhill  like 
routed  hosts;  the  dark  clouds  drove  across  like 
riven  banners;  and  the  moon  was  like  a  golden 
dragon,  like  the  Golden  Dragon  of  Wessex. 

As  we  crossed  a  tilt  of  the  torn  heath  I  saw 
suddenly  between  myself  and  the  moon  a  black 
shapeless  pile  higher  than  a  house.  The  at- 
mosphere was  so  intense  that  I  really  thought 
of  a  pile  of  dead  Danes,  with  some  phantom  con- 
queror on  the  top  of  it.  Fortunately  I  was 
crossing  these  wastes  with  a  friend  who  knew 
more  history  than  I;  and  he  told  me  that  this 
was  a  barrow  older  than  Alfred,  older  than  the 
Romans,  older  perhaps  than  the  Britons;  and 
no  man  knew  whether  it  was  a  wall  or  a  trophy 
or  a  tomb.  Ethandune  is  still  a  drifting 
229 


ETHANDUNE 

name;  but  it  gave  me  a  queer  emotion  to  think 
that,  sword  in  hand,  as  the  Danes  poured  with 
the  torrents  of  their  blood  down  to  Chippenham, 
the  great  king  may  have  lifted  up  his  head  and 
looked  at  that  oppressive  shape,  suggestive  of 
something  and  yet  suggestive  of  nothing;  may 
have  looked  at  it  as  we  did,  and  understood  it 
as  little  as  we. 


230 


THE    FLAT    FREAK 

Some  time  ago  a  Sub-Tropical  Dinner  was 
given  by  some  South  African  millionaire.  I 
forget  his  name;  and  so,  very  likely,  does  he. 
The  humour  of  this  was  so  subtle  and  haunting 
that  it  has  been  imitated  by  another  millionaire, 
who  has  given  a  North  Pole  Dinner  in  a  grand 
hotel,  on  which  he  managed  to  spend  gigantic 
sums  of  money.  I  do  not  know  how  he  did  it; 
perhaps  they  had  silver  for  snow  and  great 
sapphires  for  lumps  of  ice.  Anyhow,  it  seems 
to  have  cost  rather  more  to  bring  the  Pole  to 
London  than  to  take  Peary  to  the  Pole.  All 
this,  one  would  say,  does  not  concern  us.  We 
do  not  want  to  go  to  the  Pole — or  to  the  hotel. 
I,  for  one,  cannot  imagine  which  would  be  the 
more  dreary  and  disgusting — the  real  North 
Pole  or  the  sham  one.  But  as  a  mere  matter 
of  psychology  (that  merry  pastime)  there  is  a 
question  that  is  not  unentertaining. 
231 


THE   FLAT   FREAK 

Why  is  it  that  all  this  scheme  of  ice  and 
snow  leaves  us  cold?  Why  is  it  that  you  and 
I  feel  that  we  would  (on  the  whole)  rather  spend 
the  evening  with  two  or  three  stable  boys  in  a 
pothouse  than  take  part  in  that  pallid  and  Arc- 
tic joke?  Why  does  the  modern  millionaire's 
jest  bore  a  man  to  death  with  the  mere  thought 
of  it?  That  it  does  bore  a  man  to  death  I 
take  for  granted,  and  shall  do  so  until  some- 
body writes  to  me  in  cold  ink  and  tells  me  that 
he  really  thinks  it  funny. 

Now,  it  is  not  a  sufficient  explanation  to  say 
'that  the  joke  is  silly.  All  jokes  are  silly;  that 
is  what  they  are  for.  If  you  ask  some  sincere 
and  elemental  person,  a  woman,  for  instance, 
what  she  thinks  of  a  good  sentence  from  Dick- 
ens, she  will  say  that  it  is  "  too  silly."  When 
Mr.  Weller,  senior,  assured  Mr.  Weller,  junior, 
that  "  circumvented "  was  "  a  more  tenderer 
word  "  than  "  circumscribed,"  the  remark  was 
at  least  as  silly  as  it  was  sublime.  It  is  vain, 
then,  to  object  to  "  senseless  jokes."  The  very 
232 


THE   FLAT    FREAK 

definition  of  a  joke  is  that  it  need  have  no  sense ; 
except  that  one  wild  and  supernatural  sense 
which  we  call  the  sense  of  humour.  Humour  is 
meant,  in  a  literal  sense,  to  make  game  of  man ; 
that  is,  to  dethrone  him  from  his  official  dignity 
and  hunt  him  like  game.  It  is  meant  to  remind 
us  human  beings  that  we  have  things  about  us 
as  ungainly  and  ludicrous  as  the  nose  of  the 
elephant  or  the  neck  of  the  giraffe.  If  laughter 
does  not  touch  a  sort  of  fundamental  folly,  it 
does  not  do  its  duty  in  bringing  us  back  to  an 
enormous  and  original  simplicity.  Nothing  has 
been  worse  than  the  modern  notion  that  a  clever 
man  can  make  a  j  oke  without  taking  part  in  it ; 
without  sharing  in  the  general  absurdity  that 
such  a  situation  creates.  It  is  unpardonable 
conceit  not  to  laugh  at  your  own  jokes.  Jok- 
ing is  undignified;  that  is  why  it  is  so  good 
for  one's  soul.  Do  not  fancy  you  can  be  a  de- 
tached wit  and  avoid  being  a  buffoon ;  you  can- 
not. If  you  are  the  Court  Jester  you  must 
be  the  Court  Fool. 

Whatever  it  is,  therefore,  that  wearies  us  in 


THE   FLAT   FREAK 

thesfe  wealthy  jokes  (like  the  North  Pole  Din- 
ner) it  is  not  merely  that  men  make  fools 
of  themselves.  When  Dickens  described  Mr. 
Chuckster,  Dickens  was,  strictly  speaking,  mak- 
ing a  fool  of  himself;  for  he  was  making  a  fool 
out  of  himself.  And  every  kind  of  real  lark, 
from  acting  a  charade  to  making  a  pun,  does 
consist  in  restraining  one's  nine  hundred  and 
ninety-nine  serious  selves  and  letting  the  fool 
loose.  The  dulness  of  the  millionaire  joke  is 
much  deeper.  It  is  not  silly  at  all;  it  is  solely 
stupid.  It  does  not  consist  of  ingenuity  lim- 
ited, but  merely  of  inanity  expanded.  There 
is  considerable  difference  between  a  wit  making 
a  fool  of  himself  and  a  fool  making  a  wit  of 

himself. 

•  •  •  •  • 

The  true  explanation,  I  fancy,  may  be  stated 
thus.  We  can  all  remember  it  in  the  case  of  the 
really  inspiriting  parties  and  fooleries  of  our 
youth.  The  only  real  fun  is  to  have  limited 
materials  and  a  good  idea.  This  explains  the 
perennial    popularity    of    impromptu    private 


THE   FLAT   FREAK 

theatricals.  These  fascinate  because  they  give 
such  a  scope  for  invention  and  variety  with  the 
most  domestic  restriction  of  machinery.  A  tea- 
cosy  may  have  to  do  for  an  Admiral's  cocked 
hat ;  it  all  depends  on  whether  the  amateur  actor 
can  swear  like  an  Admiral.  A  hearth-rug  may 
have  to  do  for  a  bear's  fur;  it  all  depends  on 
whether  the  wearer  is  a  polished  and  versatile 
man  of  the  world  and  can  grunt  like  a  bear.  A 
clergyman's  hat  (to  my  own  private  and  cer- 
tain knowledge)  can  be  punched  and  thumped 
into  the  exact  shape  of  a  policeman's  helmet ;  it 
all  depends  on  the  clergyman.  I  mean  it  de- 
pends on  his  permission;  his  imprimatur;  his 
nihil  obstat.  Clergymen  can  be  policemen ;  rugs 
can  rage  like  wild  animals;  tea-cosies  can  smell 
of  the  sea ;  if  only  there  is  at  the  back  of  them 
all  one  bright  and  amusing  idea.  What  is 
really  funny  about  Christmas  charades 
in  any  average  home  is  that  there  is  a  con- 
trast between  commonplace  resources  and 
one  comic  idea.  What  is  deadly  dull  about 
the  millionaire-banquets  is  that  there  is  a 
235 


THE   FLAT   FREAK 

contrast    between    colossal    resources    and    no 

idea. 

•  •  •  •  • 

That  is  the  abyss  of  inanity  in  such  feasts — 
it  may  be  literally  called  a  yawning  abyss.  The 
abyss  is  the  vast  chasm  between  the  money 
power  employed  and  the  thing  it  is  employed  on. 
To  make  a  big  joke  out  of  a  broomstick,  a  bar- 
row and  an  old  hat — that  is  great.  But  to 
make  a  small  joke  out  of  mountains  of  emeralds 
and  tons  of  gold — surely  that  is  humiliating! 
The  North  Pole  is  not  a  very  good  joke  to 
start  with.  An  icicle  hanging  on  one's  nose  is 
a  simple  sort  of  humour  in  any  case.  If  a  set 
of  spontaneous  mummers  got  the  effect  clev- 
erly with  cut  crystals  from  the  early  Victorian 
chandelier  there  might  really  be  something 
suddenly  funny  in  it.  But  what  should  we  say 
of  hanging  diamonds  on  a  hundred  human  noses 
merely  to  make  that  precious  joke  about  icicles? 

What  can  be  more  abject  than  the  union  of 
elaborate  and  recherche  arrangements  with  an 
old  and  obvious  point?  The  clown  with  the 
236 


THE   FLAT   FREAK 

red-hot  poker  and  the  string  of  sausages  is  all 
very  well  in  his  way.  But  think  of  a  string  of 
pate  de  foie  gras  sausages  at  a  guinea  a  piece ! 
Think  of  a  red-hot  poker  cut  out  of  a  single 
ruby !  Imagine  such  fantasticalities  of  expense 
with  such  a  tameness  and  staleness  of  design. 

We  may  even  admit  the  practical  joke  if  it  is 
domestic  and  simple.  We  may  concede  that 
apple-pie  beds  and  butter-slides  are  sometimes 
useful  things  for  the  education  of  pompous  per- 
sons living  the  Higher  Life.  But  imagine  a  man 
making  a  butter-slide  and  telling  everybody  it 
was  made  with  the  most  expensive  butter.  Pic- 
ture an  apple-pie  bed  of  purple  and  cloth  of 
gold.  It  is  not  hard  to  see  that  such  schemes 
would  lead  simultaneously  to  a  double  boredom ; 
weariness  of  the  costly  and  complex  method  and 
of  the  meagre  and  trivial  thought.  This  is  the 
true  analysis,  I  think,  of  that  chill  of  tedium 
that  strikes  to  the  soul  of  any  intelligent  man 
when  he  hears  of  such  elephantine  pranks.  That 
IS  why  we  feel  that  Freak  Dinners  would  not 
even  be  freakish.  That  is  why  we  feel  that  ex- 
^37 


THE   FLAT   FREAK 

pensive    Arctic    feasts    would    probably    be    a 

frost. 

•  •  •  •  • 

If  it  be  said  that  such  things  do  no  harm,  I 
hasten,  in  one  sense,  at  least,  to  agree.  Far 
from  it;  they  do  good.  They  do  good  in  the 
most  vital  matter  of  modern  times;  for  they 
prove  and  print  in  huge  letters  the  truth  which 
our  society  must  learn  or  perish.  They  prove 
that  wealth  in  society  as  now  constituted  does 
not  tend  to  get  into  the  hands  of  the  thrifty  or 
the  capable,  but  actually  tends  to  get  into  the 
hands  of  wastrels  and  imbeciles.  And  it  proves 
that  the  wealthy  class  of  to-day  is  quite  as  ig- 
norant about  how  to  enjoy  itself  as  about  how 
to  rule  other  people.  That  it  cannot  make  its 
government  govern  or  its  education  educate  we 
may  take  as  a  trifling  weakness  of  oligarchy; 
but  pleasure  we  do  look  to  see  in  such  a  class; 
and  it  has  surely  come  to  its  decrepitude  when 
it  cannot  make  its  pleasures  please. 


238 


THE    GARDEN    OF    THE    SEA 

One  sometimes  hears  from  persons  of  the  chillier 
type  of  culture  the  remark  that  plain  country 
people  do  not  appreciate  the  beauty  of  the  coun- 
try. This  is  an  error  rooted  in  the  intellectual 
pride  of  mediocrity;  and  is  one  of  the  many 
examples  of  a  truth  in  the  idea  that  extremes 
meet.  Thus,  to  appreciate  the  virtues  of  the 
mob  one  must  either  be  on  a  level  with  it  (as  I 
am)  or  be  really  high  up,  like  the  saints.  It  is 
roughly  the  same  with  aesthetics ;  slang  and  rude 
dialect  can  be  relished  by  a  really  literary  taste, 
but  not  by  a  merely  bookish  taste.  And  when 
these  cultivated  cranks  say  that  rustics  do  not 
talk  of  Nature  in  an  appreciative  way,  they 
really  mean  that  they  do  not  talk  in  a  bookish 
way.  They  do  not  talk  bookishly  about  clouds  or 
stones,  or  pigs  or  slugs,  or  horses  or  anything 
you  please.  They  talk  piggishly  about  pigs; 
and  sluggishly,  I  suppose,  about  slugs ;  and  are 
239 


THE   GARDEN   OF   THE   SEA 

refreshingly  horsy  about  horses.  They  speak 
in  a  stony  way  of  stones ;  they  speak  in  a  cloudy 
way  of  clouds ;  and  this  is  surely  the  right  way. 
And  if  by  any  chance  a  simple  intelligent  per- 
son from  the  country  comes  in  contact  with  any 
aspect  of  Nature  unfamiliar  and  arresting,  such 
a  person's  comment  is  always  worth  remark.  It 
is  sometimes  an  epigram,  and  at  worst  it  is  never 
a  quotation. 

Consider,  for  instance,  what  wastes  of  wordy 
imitation  and  ambiguity  the  ordinary  educated 
person  in  the  big  towns  could  pour  out  on  the 
subject  of  the  sea.  A  country  girl  I  know  in  the 
county  of  Buckingham  had  never  seen  the  sea  in 
her  life  until  the  other  day.  When  she  was 
asked  what  she  thought  of  it  she  said  it  was 
like  cauliflowers.  Now  that  is  a  piece  of  pure 
literature — ^vivid,  entirely  independent  and 
original,  and  perfectly  true.  I  had  always  been 
haunted  with  an  analogous  kinship  which  I 
could  never  locate;  cabbages  always  remind  me 
of  the  sea  and  the  sea  always  reminds  me  of 
cabbages.  It  is  partly,  perhaps,  the  veined 
240 


THE   GARDEN   OF   THE    SEA 

mingling  of  violet  and  green,  as  in  the  sea  a 
purple  that  is  almost  dark  red  may  mix  with  a 
green  that  is  almost  yellow,  and  still  be  the  blue 
sea  as  a  whole.  But  it  is  more  the  grand  curves 
of  the  cabbage  that  curl  over  cavernously  like 
waves,  and  it  is  partly  again  that  dreamy  repeti- 
tion, as  of  a  pattern,  that  made  two  great  poets, 
^schylus  and  Shakespeare,  use  a  word  like 
"  multitudinous  "  of  the  ocean.  But  just  where 
my  fancy  halted  the  Buckinghamshire  young 
woman  rushed  (so  to  speak)  to  my  imaginative 
rescue.  Cauliflowers  are  twenty  times  better 
than  cabbages,  for  they  show  the  wave  breaking 
as  well  as  curling,  and  the  efflorescence  of  the 
branching  foam,  blind,  bubbling,  and  opaque. 
Moreover,  the  strong  lines  of  life  are  suggested ; 
the  arches  of  the  rushing  waves  have  all  the 
rigid  energy  of  green  stalks,  as  if  the  whole  sea 
were  one  great  green  plant  with  one  immense 
white  flower  rooted  in  the  abyss. 

Now,  a  large  number  of  delicate  and  superior 
persons  would  refuse  to  see  the  force  in  that 
kitchen  garden  comparison,  because  it  is  not  con- 
241 


THE   GARDEN   OF   THE    SEA 

nected  with  any  of  the  ordinary  maritime  senti- 
ments as  stated  in  books  and  songs.  The 
aesthetic  amateur  would  say  that  he  knew  what 
large  and  philosophical  thoughts  he  ought  to 
have  by  the  boundless  deep.  He  would  say  that 
he  wa«  not  a  greengrocer  who  would  think  first 
of  greens.  To  which  I  should  reply,  like  Ham- 
let, apropos  of  a  parallel  profession,  "  I  would 
you  were  so  honest  a  man."  The  mention  of 
"  Hamlet  "  reminds  me,  by  the  way,  that  be- 
sides the  girl  who  had  never  seen  the  sea,  I  knew 
a  girl  who  had  never  seen  a  stage-play.  She 
was  taken  to  "  Hamlet,"  and  she  said  it  was 
very  sad.  There  is  another  case  of  going  to 
the  primordial  point  which  is  overlaid  by  learn- 
ing and  secondary  impressions.  We  are  so  used 
to  thinking  of  "  Hamlet "  as  a  problem  that  we 
sometimes  quite  forget  that  it  is  a  tragedy,  just 
as  we  are  so  used  to  thinking  of  the  sea  as  vast 
and  vague,  that  we  scarcely  notice  when  it  is 
white  and  green. 

But  there  is  another  quarrel  involved  in  which 
the    young   gentleman    of   culture    comes    into 
242 


THE    GARDEN   OF   THE    SEA 

violent  collision  with  the  young  lady  of  the 
cauliflowers.  The  first  essential  of  the  merely 
bookish  view  of  the  sea  is  that  it  is  boundless, 
and  gives  a  sentiment  of  infinity.  Now  it  is 
quite  certain,  I  think,  that  the  cauliflower  simile 
was  partly  created  by  exactly  the  opposite  im- 
pression, the  impression  of  boundary  and  of 
barrier.  The  girl  thought  of  it  as  a  field  of 
vegetables,  even  as  a  yard  of  vegetables.  The 
girl  was  right.  The  ocean  only  suggests  infinity 
when  you  cannot  see  it;  a  sea  mist  may  seem 
endless,  but  not  a  sea.  So  far  from  being  vague 
and  vanishing,  the  sea  is  the  one  hard  straight 
line  in  Nature.  It  is  the  one  plain  limit;  the 
only  thing  that  God  has  made  that  really  looks 
like  a  wall.  Compared  to  the  sea,  not  only  sun 
and  cloud  are  chaotic  and  doubtful,  but  solid 
mountains  and  standing  forests  i»ay  be  said  to 
melt  and  fade  and  flee  in  the  presence  of  that 
lonely  iron  line.  The  old  naval  phrase,  that  the 
seas  are  England's  bulwarks,  is  not  a  frigid  and 
artificial  metaphor;  it  came  into  the  head  of 
some  genuine  sea-dog,  when  he  was  genuinely 


THE   GARDEN   OF   THE    SEA 

looking  at  the  sea.  For  the  edge  of  the  sea  is 
like  the  edge  of  a  sword;  it  is  sharp,  military, 
and  decisive ;  it  really  looks  like  a  bolt  or  bar, 
and  not  like  a  mere  expansion.  It  hangs  in 
heaven,  grey,  or  green,  or  blue,  changing  in 
colour,  but  changeless  in  form,  behind  all  the 
slippery  contours  of  the  land  and  all  the  sav- 
age softness  of  the  forests,  like  the  scales  of  God 
held  even.  It  hangs,  a  perpetual  reminder  of 
that  divine  reason  and  justice  which  abides  be- 
hind all  compromises  and  all  legitimate  variety ; 
the  one  straight  line ;  the  limit  of  the  intellect ; 
the  dark  and  ultimate  dogma  of  the  world. 


244 


THE    SENTIMENTALIST 

"  Sentimentalism  is  the  most  broken  reed  on 
which  righteousness  can  lean  " ;  these  were,  I 
think,  the  exact  words  of  a  distinguished  Amer- 
ican visitor  at  the  Guildhall,  and  may  Heaven 
forgive  me  if  I  do  him  a  wrong.  It  was  spoken 
in  illustration  of  the  folly  of  supporting 
Egyptian  and  other  Oriental  nationalism,  and  it 
has  tempted  me  to  some  reflections  on  the  first 
word  of  the  sentence. 

The  Sentimentalist,  roughly  speaking,  is  the 
man  who  wants  to  eat  his  cake  and  have  it.  He 
has  no  sense  of  honour  about  ideas ;  he  will  not 
see  that  one  must  pay  for  an  idea  as  for  any- 
thing else.  He  will  not  see  that  any  worthy 
idea,  like  any  honest  woman,  can  only  be  won  on 
its  own  terms,  and  with  its  logical  chain  of  loy- 
alty. One  idea  attracts  him;  another  idea 
really  inspires  him;  a  third  idea  flatters  him; 
a  fourth  idea  pays  him.  He  will  have  them  all 
M5 


THE    SENTIMENTALIST 

at  once  in  one  wild  intellectual  harem,  no  matter 
how  much  they  quarrel  and  contradict  each 
other.  The  Sentimentalist  is  a  philosophic 
profligate,  who  tries  to  capture  every  mental 
beauty  without  reference  to  its  rival  beauties; 
who  will  not  even  be  off^  with  the  old  love  before 
he  is  on  with  the  new.  Thus  if  a  man  were  to 
say,  "  I  love  this  woman,  but  I  may  some  day 
find  my  affinity  in  some  other  woman,"  he  would 
be  a  Sentimentalist.  He  would  be  saying,  "  I 
will  eat  my  wedding-cake  and  keep  it."  Or  if 
a  man  should  say,  "  I  am  a  Republican,  believing 
in  the  equality  of  citizens ;  but  when  the  Govern- 
ment has  given  me  my  peerage  I  can  do  infinite 
good  as  a  kind  landlord  and  a  wise  legislator  " ; 
then  that  man  would  be  a  Sentimentalist.  He 
would  be  trying  to  keep  at  the  same  time  the 
classic  austerity  of  equality  and  also  the  vulgar 
excitement  of  an  aristocrat.  Or  if  a  man  should 
say,  "  I  am  in  favour  of  religious  equality ;  but  I 
must  preserve  the  Protestant  Succession,"  he 
would  be  a  Sentimentalist  of  a  grosser  and  more 
improbable  kind. 

246 


THE    SENTIMENTALIST 

This  is  the  essence  of  the  Sentimentalist ;  that 
he  seeks  to  enjoy  every  idea  without  its  sequence, 
and  every  pleasure  without  its  consequence. 

Now  it  would  really  be  hard  to  find  a  worse 
case  of  this  inconsequent  sentimentalism  than 
the  theory  of  the  British  Empire  advanced  by 
Mr,  Roosevelt  himself  in  his  attack  on  Senti- 
mentalists. For  the  Imperial  theory,  the  Roose- 
velt and  Kipling  theory,  of  our  relation  to  East- 
em  races  is  simply  one  of  eating  the  Oriental 
cake  (I  suppose  a  Sultana  Cake)  and  at  the 
same  time  leaving  it  alone. 

Now  there  are  two  sane  attitudes  of  a 
European  statesman  towards  Eastern  peoples, 
and  there  are  only  two. 

First,  he  may  simply  say  that  the  less  we  have 
to  do  with  them  the  better;  that  whether  they 
are  lower  than  us  or  higher  they  are  so  catas- 
trophically  different  that  the  more  we  go  our 
way  and  they  go  theirs  the  better  for  all  parties 
concerned.  I  will  confess  to  some  tenderness 
for  this  view.  There  is  much  to  be  said  for  let- 
ting that  calm  immemorial  life  of  slave  and 
247 


THE    SENTIMENTALIST 

sultan,  temple  and  palm  tree  flow  on  as  it  has 
always  flowed.  The  best  reason  of  all,  the  rea- 
son that  aff^ects  me  most  finally,  is  that  if  we 
left  the  rest  of  the  world  alone  we  might  have 
some  time  for  attending  to  our  own  affairs, 
which  are  urgent  to  the  point  of  excruciation. 
All  history  points  to  this ;  that  intensive  cultiva- 
tion in  the  long  run  triumphs  over  the  widest 
extensive  cultivation;  or,  in  other  words,  that 
making  one's  own  field  superior  is  far  more  ef- 
fective than  reducing  other  people's  fields  to  in- 
feriority. If  you  cultivate  your  own  garden 
and  grow  a  specially  large  cabbage,  people  will 
probably  come  to  see  it.  Whereas  the  life  of 
one  selling  small  cabbages  round  the  whole  dis- 
trict is  often  forlorn. 

Now,  the  Imperial  Pioneer  is  essentially  a 
commercial  traveller ;  and  a  commercial  traveller 
is  essentially  a  person  who  goes  to  see  people 
because  they  don't  want  to  see  him.  As  long 
as  empires  go  about  urging  their  ideas  on 
others,  I  always  have  a  notion  that  the  ideas 
are  no  good.  If  they  were  really  so  splendid, 
248 


THE    SENTIMENTALIST 

they  would  make  the  country  preaching  them 
a  wonder  of  the  world.  That  is  the  true  ideal ; 
a  great  nation  ought  not  to  be  a  hammer,  but  a 
magnet.  Men  went  to  the  mediaeval  Sorbonne 
because  it  was  worth  going  to.  Men  went  to 
old  Japan  because  only  there  could  they  find 
the  unique  and  exquisite  old  Japanese  art.  No- 
body will  ever  go  to  modern  Japan  (nobody 
worth  bothering  about,  I  mean),  because  mod- 
em Japan  has  made  the  huge  mistake  of  going 
to  the  other  people :  becoming  a  common  empire. 
The  mountain  has  condescended  to  Mahomet; 
and  henceforth  Mahomet  will  whistle  for  it  when 
he  wants  it. 

•  •  •  •  • 

That  is  my  political  theory:  that  we  should 
make  England  worth  copying  instead  of  telling 
everybody  to  copy  her. 

But  it  is  not  the  only  possible  theory.  There 
is  another  view  of  our  relations  to  such  places 
as  Egypt  and  India  which  is  entirely  tenable. 
It  may  be  said,  "  We  Europeans  are  the  heirs 
of  the  Roman  Empire ;  when  all  is  said  we  have 
249 


THE    SENTIMENTALIST 

the  largest  freedom,  the  most  exact  science,  the 
most  solid  romance.  We  have  a  deep  though 
undefined  obligation  to  give  as  we  have  received 
from  God;  because  the  tribes  of  men  are  truly 
thirsting  for  these  things  as  for  water.  All 
men  really  want  clear  laws:  we  can  give  clear 
laws.  All  men  really  want  hygiene :  we  can  give 
hygiene.  We  are  not  merely  imposing  Western 
ideas.  We  are  simply  fulfilling  human  ideas — 
for  the  first  time.'' 

On  this  line,  I  think,  it  is  possible  to  justify 
the  forts  of  Africa  and  the  railroads  of  Asia ;  but 
on  this  line  we  must  go  much  further.  If  it  is 
our  duty  to  give  our  best,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
about  what  is  our  best.  The  greatest  thing  our 
Europe  has  made  is  the  Citizen :  the  idea  of  the 
average  man,  free  and  full  of  honour,  volun- 
tarily invoking  on  his  own  sin  the  just  vengeance 
of  his  city.  All  else  we  have  done  is  mere  ma- 
chinery for  that:  railways  exist  only  to  carry 
the  Citizen ;  forts  only  to  defend  him ;  electricity 
only  to  light  him,  medicine  only  to  heal  him. 
Popularism,  the  idea  of  the  people  alive  and  pa- 
g50 


THE    SENTIMENTALIST 

tiently  feeding  history,  that  we  cannot  give; 
for  it  exists  everywhere.  East  and  West.  But 
democracy,  the  idea  of  the  people  fighting  and 
governing — that  is  the  only  thing  we  have  to 
give. 

Those  are  the  two  roads.  But  between  them 
weakly  wavers  the  Sentimentalist — ^that  is,  the 
Imperialist  of  the  Roosevelt  school.  He  wants 
to  have  it  both  ways ;  to  have  the  splendours  of 
success  without  the  perils.  Europe  may  enslave 
Asia,  because  it  is  flattering:  but  Europe  must 
not  free  Asia,  because  that  is  responsible.  It 
tickles  his  Imperial  taste  that  Hindoos  should 
have  European  hats :  it  is  too  dangerous  if  they 
have  European  heads.  He  cannot  leave  Asia 
Asiatic:  yet  he  dare  not  contemplate  Asia  as 
European.  Therefore  he  proposes  to  have  in 
Egypt  railway  signals,  but  not  flags;  despatch 
boxes,  but  not  ballot  boxes. 

In  short,  the  Sentimentalist  decides  to  spread 
the  body  of  Europe  without  the  soul. 


261 


THE    WHITE    HORSES 

It  is  within  my  experience,  which  is  very  brief 
and  occasional  in  this  matter,  that  it  is  not  really 
at  all  easy  to  talk  in  a  motor-car.  This  is  for- 
tunate; first,  because,  as  a  whole,  it  prevents 
me  from  motoring;  and  second  because,  at  any 
given  moment,  it  prevents  me  from  talking.  The 
difficulty  is  not  wholly  due  to  the  physical  con- 
ditions, though  these  are  distinctly  unconversa- 
tional.  FitzGerald's  Omar,  being  a  pessimist, 
was  probably  rich,  and  being  a  lazy  fellow,  was 
almost  certainly  a  motorist.  If  any  doubt 
could  exist  on  the  point,  it  is  enough  to  say 
that,  in  speaking  of  the  foolish  profits,  Omar  has 
defined  the  difficulties  of  colloquial  motoring 
with  a  precision  which  cannot  be  accidental. 
"  Their  words  to  wind  are  scattered ;  and  their 
mouths  are  stopped  with  dust."  From  this 
follows  not  (as  many  of  the  cut-and-dried 
philosophers  would  say)  a  savage  silence  and 
262 


THE   WHITE   HORSES 

mutual  hostility,  but  rather  one  of  those  rich 
silences  that  make  the  mass  and  bulk  of 
all  friendship;  the  silence  of  men  rowing 
the  same  boat  or  fighting  in  the  same  battle- 
line. 

It  happened  that  the  other  day  I  hired  a  mo- 
tor-car, because  I  wanted  to  visit  in  very  rapid 
succession  the  battle-places  and  hiding-places 
of  Alfred  the  Great;  and  for  a  thing  of  this 
sort  a  motor  is  really  appropriate.  It  is  not  by 
any  means  the  best  way  of  seeing  the  beauty  of 
the  country ;  you  see  beauty  better  by  walking, 
and  best  of  all  by  sitting  still.  But  it  is  a  good 
method  in  any  enterprise  that  involves  a  parody 
of  the  military  or  governmental  quality — any- 
thing which  needs  to  know  quickly  the  whole 
contour  of  a  county  or  the  rough,  relative  posi- 
tion of  men  and  towns.  On  such  a  journey, 
like  jagged  lightning,  I  sat  from  morning  till 
night  by  the  side  of  the  chauffeur;  and  we 
scarcely  exchanged  a  word  to  the  hour.  But  by 
the  time  the  yellow  stars  came  out  in  the  villages 
and  the  white  stars  in  the  skies,  I  think  I  under- 
253 


THE   WHITE   HORSES 

stood  his  character;  and  I  fear  he  understood 
mine. 

He  was  a  Cheshire  man  with  a  sour,  patient, 
and  humorous  face;  he  was  modest,  though  a 
north  countryman,  and  genial,  though  an  ex- 
pert. He  spoke  (when  he  spoke  at  all)  with  a 
strong  northland  accent;  and  he  evidently  was 
new  to  the  beautiful  south  country,  as  was  clear 
both  from  his  approval  and  his  complaints.  But 
though  he  came  from  the  north  he  was  agri- 
cultural and  not  commercial  in  origin ;  he  looked 
at  the  land  rather  than  the  towns,  even  if  he 
looked  at  it  with  a  somewhat  more  sharp  and 
utilitarian  eye.  His  first  remark  for  some 
hours  was  uttered  when  we  were  crossing  the 
more  coarse  and  desolate  heights  of  Salisbury 
Plain.  He  remarked  that  he  had  always 
thought  that  Salisbury  Plain  was  a  plain.  This 
alone  showed  that  he  was  new  to  the  vicinity. 
But  he  also  said,  with  a  critical  frown,  "  A  lot 
of  this  land  ought  to  be  good  land  enough.  Why 
don't  they  use  it?''  He  was  then  silent  for 
some  more  hours. 

254 


THE   WHITE   HORSES 

At  an  abrupt  angle  of  the  slopes  that  lead 
down  from  what  is  called  (with  no  little  humour) 
Salisbury  Plain,  I  saw  suddenly,  as  by  accident, 
something  I  was  looking  for — that  is,  something 
I  did  not  expect  to  see.  We  are  all  supposed 
to  be  trying  to  walk  into  heaven ;  but  we  should 
be  uncommonly  astonished  if  we  suddenly  walked 
into  it.  As  I  was  leaving  Salisbury  Plain  (to 
put  it  roughly)  I  lifted  up  my  eyes  and  saw  the 
White  Horse  of  Britain. 

One  or  two  truly  fine  poets  of  the  Tory  and 
Protestant  type,  such  as  Swinburne  and  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling,  have  eulogised  England  un- 
der the  image  of  white  horses,  meaning  the  white- 
maned  breakers  of  the  Channel.  This  is  right 
and  natural  enough.  The  true  philosophical 
Tory  goes  back  to  ancient  things  because  he 
thinks  they  will  be  anarchic  things.  It  would 
startle  him  very  much  to  be  told  that  there  are 
white  horses  of  artifice  in  England  that  may  be 
older  than  those  wild  white  horses  of  the  ele- 
ments. Yet  it  is  truly  so.  Nobody  knows  how 
old  are  those  strange  green  and  white 
255 


THE  WHITE   HORSES 

hieroglyphics,  those  straggling  quadrupeds  of 
chalk,  that  stand  out  on  the  sides  of  so  many  of 
the  Southern  Downs.  They  are  possibly  older 
than  Saxon  and  older  than  Roman  times.  They 
may  well  be  older  than  British,  older  than  any 
recorded  times.  They  may  go  back,  for  all  we 
know,  to  the  first  faint  seeds  of  human  life  on 
this  planet.  Men  may  have  picked  a  horse  out 
of  the  grass  long  before  they  scratched  a  horse 
on  a  vase  or  pot,  or  messed  and  massed  any 
horse  out  of  clay.  This  may  be  the  oldest 
human  art — ^before  building  or  graving.  And  if 
so,  it  may  have  first  happened  in  another 
geological  age;  before  the  sea  burst  through 
the  narrow  Straits  of  Dover.  The  White  Horse 
may  have  begun  in  Berkshire  when  there  were  no 
white  horses  at  Folkestone  or  Newhaven.  That 
rude  but  evident  white  outline  that  I  saw  across 
the  valley  may  have  been  begun  when  Brit- 
ain was  not  an  island.  We  forget  that 
there  are  many  places  where  art  is  older  than 
nature. 

We  took  a  long  detour  through  somewhat 
^56 


THE   WHITE   HORSES 

easier  roads,  till  we  came  to  a  breach  or  chasm 
in  the  valley,  from  which  we  saw  our  friend  the 
White  Horse  once  more.  At  least,  we  thought 
it  was  our  friend  the  White  Horse ;  but  after  a 
little  inquiry  we  discovered  to  our  astonishment 
that  it  was  another  friend  and  another  horse. 
Along  the  leaning  flanks  of  the  same  fair  valley 
there  was  (it  seemed)  another  white  horse,  as 
rude  and  as  clean,  as  ancient  and  as  modern, 
as  the  first.  This,  at  least,  I  thought  must  be 
the  aboriginal  White  Horse  of  Alfred,  which  I 
had  always  heard  associated  with  his  name.  And 
ye^  before  we  had  driven  into  Wantage  and  seen 
King  Alfred's  quaint  grey  statue  in  the  sun,  we 
had  seen  yet  a  third  white  horse.  And  the  third 
white  horse  was  so  hopelessly  unlike  a  horse 
that  we  were  sure  that  it  was  genuine.  The  final 
and  original  white  horse,  the  white  horse  of  the 
White  Horse  Vale,  has  that  big,  babyish  quality 
that  truly  belongs  to  our  remotest  ancestors.  It 
really  has  the  prehistoric,  preposterous  quality 
of  Zulu  or  New  Zealand  native  drawings.  This 
at  least  was  surely  made  by  our  fathers  when 
257 


THE   WHITE   HORSES 

they  were  barely  men ;  long  before  they  were  civ- 
ilised men. 

But  why  was  it  made?  Why  did  barbarians 
take  so  much  trouble  to  make  a  horse  nearly  as 
big  as  a  hamlet;  a  horse  who  could  bear  no 
hunter,  who  could  drag  no  load?  What  was 
this  titanic,  sub-conscious  instinct  for  spoiling  a 
beautiful  green  slope  with  a  very  ugly  white 
quadruped?  What  (for  the  matter  of  that) 
is  this  whole  hazardous  fancy  of  humanity  ruling 
the  earth,  which  may  have  begun  with  white 
horses,  which  may  by  no  means  end  with  twenty 
horse-power  cars  ?  As  I  rolled  away  out  of  that 
country,  I  was  still  cloudily  considering  how 
ordinary  men  ever  came  to  want  to  make  such 
strange  chalk  horses,  when  my  chauffeur  startled 
me  by  speaking  for  the  first  time  for  nearly  two 
hours.  He  suddenly  let  go  one  of  the  handles 
and  pointed  at  a  gross  green  bulk  of  down  that 
happened  to  swell  above  us. 

"  That  would  be  a  good  place,"  he  said. 

Naturally  I  referred  to  his  last  speech  of 
some  hours  before ;  and  supposed  he  meant  that 
g58 


THE   WHITE   HORSES 

it  would  be  promising  for  agriculture.  As  a 
fact,  it  was  quite  unpromising;  and  this  made 
me  suddenly  understand  the  quiet  ardour  in  his 
eye.  All  of  a  sudden  I  saw  what  he  really 
meant.  He  really  meant  that  this  would  be  a 
splendid  place  to  pick  out  another  white  horse. 
He  knew  no  more  than  I  did  why  it  was  done; 
but  he  was  in  some  unthinkable  prehistoric  tradi- 
tion, because  he  wanted  to  do  it.  He  became  so 
acute  in  sensibility  that  he  could  not  bear  to 
pass  any  broad  breezy  hill  of  grass  on  which 
there  was  not  a  white  horse.  He  could  hardly 
keep  his  hands  off  the  hills.  He  could  hardly 
leave  any  of  the  living  grass  alone. 

Then  I  left  off  wondering  why  the  primitive 
man  made  so  many  white  horses.  I  left  off 
troubling  in  what  sense  the  ordinary  eternal  man 
had  sought  to  scar  or  deface  the  hills.  I  was 
content  to  know  that  he  did  want  it ;  for  I  had 
seen  him  wanting  it. 


859 


THE    LONG    BOW 

I  FIND  myself  still  sitting  in  front  of  the  last 
book  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  I  say  stunned  with 
admiration,  my  family  says  sleepy  with  fatigue. 
I  still  feel  vaguely  all  the  things  in  Mr.  Wells's 
book  which  I  agree  with ;  and  I  still  feel  vividly 
the  one  thing  that  I  deny.  I  deny  that  biology 
can  destroy  the  sense  of  truth,  which  alone  can 
even  desire  biology.  No  truth  which  I  find  can 
deny  that  I  am  seeking  the  truth.  My  mind 
cannot  find  anything  which  denies  my  mind. 
.  .  .  But  what  is  all  this.?  This  is  no  sort  of 
talk  for  a  genial  essay.  Let  us  change  the  sub- 
ject ;  let  us  have  a  romance  or  a  fable  or  a  fairy 
tale. 

Come,  let  us  tell  each  other  stories.     There 

was  once  a  king  who  was  very  fond  of  listening 

to  stories,  like  the  king  in  the  Arabian  Nights. 

The  only  difference  was  that,  unlike  that  cynical 

260 


THE   LONG   BOW 

Oriental,  this  king  believed  all  the  stories  that 
he  heard.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  he 
lived  in  England.  His  face  had  not  the  swarthy 
secrecy  of  the  tyrant  of  the  thousand  tales ;  on 
the  contrary,  his  eyes  were  as  big  and  innocent 
as  two  blue  moons;  and  when  his  yellow  beard 
turned  totally  white  he  seemed  to  be  growing 
younger.  Above  him  hung  still  his  heavy  sword 
and  horn,  to  remind  men  that  he  had  been  a  tall 
hunter  and  warrior  in  his  time :  indeed,  with  that 
rusted  sword  he  had  wrecked  armies.  But  he 
was  one  of  those  who  will  never  know  the  world, 
even  when  they  conquer  it.  Besides  his  love  of 
this  old  Chaucerian  pastime  of  the  telling  of 
tales,  he  was,  like  many  old  English  kings,  spe- 
cially interested  in  the  art  of  the  bow.  He 
gathered  round  him  great  archers  of  the  stature 
of  Ulysses  and  Robin  Hood,  and  to  four  of 
these  he  gave  the  whole  government  of  his  king- 
dom. They  did  not  mind  governing  his  king- 
dom ;  but  they  were  sometimes  a  little  bored  with 
the  necessity  of  telling  him  stories.  None  of 
their  stories  were  true ;  but  the  king  believed  all 
26X 


THE   LONG   BOW 

of  them,  and  this  became  very  depressing.  They 
created  the  most  preposterous  romances;  and 
could  not  get  the  credit  of  creating  them.  Their 
true  ambition  was  sent  empty  away.  They 
were  praised  as  archers;  but  they  desired  to  be 
praised  as  poets.  They  were  trusted  as  men, 
but  they  would  rather  have  been  admired  as 
literary  men. 

At  last,  in  an  hour  of  desperation,  they  formed 
themselves  into  a  club  or  conspiracy  with  the 
object  of  inventing  some  story  which  even  the 
king  could  not  swallow.  They  called  it  The 
League  of  the  Long  Bow ;  thus  attaching  them- 
selves by  a  double  bond  to  their  motherland  of 
England,  which  has  been  steadily  celebrated 
since  the  Norman  Conquest  for  its  heroic  arch- 
ery and  for  the  extraordinary  credulity  of  its 
people. 

At  last  it  seemed  to  the  four  archers  that  their 
hour  had  come.  The  king  commonly  sat  in  a 
green  curtained  chamber,  which  opened  by  four 
doors,  and  was  surmounted  by  four  turrets. 
Summoning  his  champions  to  hira  on  an  April 
262 


THE   LONG   BOW 

evening,  he  sent  out  each  of  them  by  a  separate 
door,  telling  him  to  return  at  morning  with  the 
tale  of  his  journey.  Every  champion  bowed 
low,  and,  girding  on  great  armour  as  for  awful 
adventures,  retired  to  some  part  of  the  gai*den 
to  think  of  a  lie.  They  did  not  want  to  think 
of  a  lie  which  would  deceive  the  king;  any  lie 
would  do  that.  They  wanted  to  think  of  a  lie 
so  outrageous  that  it  would  not  deceive  him, 
and  that  was  a  serious  matter. 

The  first  archer  who  returned  was  a  dark, 
quiet,  clever  fellow,  very  dexterous  in  small  mat- 
ters of  mechanics.  He  was  more  interested  in 
the  science  of  the  bow  than  in  the  sport  of  it. 
Also  he  would  only  shoot  at  a  mark,  for  he 
thought  it  cruel  to  kill  beasts  and  birds,  and 
atrocious  to  kill  men.  When  he  left  the  king 
he  had  gone  out  into  the  wood  and  tried  all  sorts 
of  tiresome  experiments  about  the  bending  of 
branches  and  the  impact  of  arrows ;  when  even  he 
found  it  tiresome  he  returned  to  the  house  of 
the  four  turrets  and  narrated  his  adventure. 
"  Well,"  said  the  king,  "  what  have  you  been 
263 


THE   LONG   BOW 

shooting?"  "Arrows,"  answered  the  archer. 
"  So  I  suppose,"  said  the  king,  smiling;  "  but  I 
mean,  I  mean  what  wild  things  have  you  shot?  " 
"  I  have  shot  nothing  but  arrows,"  answered  the 
bowman  obstinately.  "  When  I  went  out  on  to 
the  plain  I  saw  in  a  crescent  the  black  army  of 
the  Tartars,  the  terrible  archers  whose  bows 
are  of  bended  steel,  and  their  bolts  as  big  as 
javelins.  They  spied  me  afar  off,  and  the 
shower  of  their  arrows  shut  out  the  sun  and 
made  a  rattling  roof  above  me.  You  know,  I 
think  it  wrong  to  kill  a  bird,  or  worm,  or  even  a 
Tartar.  But  such  is  the  precision  and  rapidity 
of  perfect  science  that,  with  my  own  arrows,  I 
split  every  arrow  as  it  came  against  me.  I  struck 
every  flying  shaft  as  if  it  were  a  flying  bird. 
Therefore,  Sire,  I  may  say  truly,  that  I  shot 
nothing  but  arrows."  The  king  said,  "  I  know 
how  clever  you  engineers  are  with  your  fingers." 
The  archer  said,  "  Oh,"  and  went  out. 

The  second  archer,  who  had  curly  hair  and 
was  pale,  poetical,  and  rather  eff^eminate,  had 
merely  gone  out  into  the  garden  and  stared  at 
264 


THE   LONG   BOW 

the  moon.  When  the  moon  had  become  too 
wide,  blank,  and  watery,  even  for  his  own  wide, 
blank,  and  watery  eyes,  he  came  in  again.  And 
when  the  king  said  "  What  have  you  been  shoot- 
ing? ''  he  answered  with  great  volubility,  "  I 
have  shot  a  man ;  not  a  man  from  Tartary,  not  a 
man  from  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  or  America; 
not  a  man  on  this  earth  at  all.  I  have  shot  the 
Man  in  the  Moon."  "  Shot  the  Man  in  the 
Moon?  "  repeated  the  king  with  something  like 
a  mild  surprise.  "  It  is  easy  to  prove  it,"  said 
the  archer  with  hysterical  haste.  "  Examine 
the  moon  through  this  particularly  powerful 
telescope,  and  you  will  no  longer  find  any 
traces  of  a  man  there."  The  king  glued  his  big 
blue  idiotic  eye  to  the  telescope  for  about  ten 
minutes,  and  then  said,  "  You  are  right :  as  you 
have  often  pointed  out,  scientific  truth  can  only 
be  tested  by  the  senses.  I  believe  you."  And 
the  second  archer  went  out,  and  being  of  a  more 
emotional  temperament  burst  into  tears. 

The  third  archer  was  a  savage,  brooding  sort 
of  man  with  tangled  hair  and  dreamy  eyes,  and 
265 


THE   LONG   BOW 

he  came  In  without  any  preface,  saying,  "  I  have 
lost  all  my  arrows.  They  have  turned  into 
birds."  Then  as  he  saw  that  they  all  stared  at 
him,  he  said,  "  Well,  you  know  everything 
changes  on  the  earth ;  mud  turns  into  marigolds, 
eggs  turn  into  chickens ;  one  can  even  breed  dogs 
into  quite  different  shapes.  Well,  I  shot  my 
arrows  at  the  awful  eagles  that  clash  their  wings 
round  the  Himalayas ;  great  golden  eagles  as  big 
as  elephants,  which  snap  the  tall  trees  by  perch- 
ing on  them.  My  arrows  fled  so  far  over 
mountain  and  valley  that  they  turned  slowly  into 
fowls  in  their  flight.  See  here,"  and  he  threw 
down  a  dead  bird  and  laid  an  arrow  beside  it. 
"  Can't  you  see  they  are  the  same  structure? 
The  straight  shaft  is  the  backbone;  the  sharp 
point  is  the  beak ;  the  feather  is  the  rudimentary 
plumage.  It  is  merely  modification  and  evolu- 
tion." After  a  silence  the  king  nodded  gravely 
and  said,  "  Yes ;  of  course  everything  is  evolu- 
tion." At  this  the  third  archer  suddenly  and 
violently  left  the  room,  and  was  heard  in 
some  distant  part  of  the  building  making 
266 


THE   LONG   BOW 

extraordinary   noises   either  of  sorrow   or  of 
mirth. 

The  fourth  archer  was  a  stunted  man  with  a 
face  as  dead  as  wood,  but  with  wicked  little  eyes 
close  together,  and  very  much  alive.  His  com- 
rades dissuaded  him  from  going  in  because  they 
said  that  they  had  soared  up  into  the  seventh 
heaven  of  living  lies,  and  that  there  was  literally 
nothing  which  the  old  man  would  not  believe. 
The  face  of  the  little  archer  became  a  little  more 
wooden  as  he  forced  his  way  in,  and  when  he  was 
inside  he  looked  round  with  blinking  bewilder- 
ment. "  Ha,  the  last,"  said  the  king  heartily, 
"  welcome  back  again ! "  There  was  a  long 
pause,  and  then  the  stunted  archer  said,  "  What 
do  you  mean  by  'again'?  I  have  never  been 
here  before.''  The  king  stared  for  a  few  sec- 
onds, and  said,  "  I  sent  you  out  from  this  room 
with  the  four  doors  last  night."  After  another 
pause  the  little  man  slowly  shook  his  head.  "  I 
never  saw  you  before,"  he  said  simply;  "you 
never  sent  me  out  from  anywhere.  I  only  saw 
your  four  turrets  in  the  distance,  and  strayed  in 
267 


THE   LONG   BOW 

here  by  accident.  I  was  bom  in  an  island  in  the 
Greek  Archipelago ;  I  am  by  profession  an  auc- 
tioneer, and  my  name  is  Punk."  The  king  sat 
on  his  throne  for  seven  long  instants  like  a 
statue ;  and  then  there  awoke  in  his  mild  and  an- 
cient eyes  an  awful  thing;  the  complete  convic- 
tion of  untruth.  Every  one  has  felt  it  who  has 
found  a  child  obstinately  false.  He  rose  to  his 
height  and  took  down  the  heavy  sword  above 
him,  plucked  it  out  naked,  and  then  spoke.  "  I 
will  believe  your  mad  tales  about  the  exact  ma- 
chinery of  arrows ;  for  that  is  science.  I  will  be- 
lieve your  mad  tales  about  traces  of  life  in  the 
moon;  for  that  is  science.  I  will  believe  your 
mad  tales  about  jellyfish  turning  into  gentlemen, 
and  everything  turning  into  anything;  for  that 
is  science.  But  I  will  not  believe  you  when 
you  tell  me  what  I  know  to  be  untrue.  I  will 
not  believe  you  when  you  say  that  you  did  not 
all  set  forth  under  my  authority  and  out  of  my 
house.  The  other  three  may  conceivably  have 
told  the  truth;  but  this  last  man  has  certainly 
lied.  Therefore  I  will  kill  him."  And  with 
268 


THE   LONG   BOW 

that  the  old  and  gentle  king  ran  at  the  man 
with  uplifted  sword ;  but  he  was  arrested  by  the 
roar  of  happy  laughter,  which  told  the  world 
that  there  is,  after  all,  something  which  an  Eng- 
lishman will  not  swallow. 


m9 


THE    MODERN    SCROOGE 

Me.  Vernon-Smith,  of  Trinity,  and  the  Social 
Settlement,  Tooting,  author  of  "  A  Higher  Lon- 
don "  and  "  The  Boyg  System  at  Work,"  came 
to  the  conclusion,  after  looking  through  his 
select  and  even  severe  library,  that  Dickens's 
"  Christmas  Carol  "  was  a  very  suitable  thing  to 
be  read  to  charwomen.  Had  they  been  men 
they  would  have  been  forcibly  subjected  to 
Browning's  "  Christmas  Eve "  with  exposi- 
tion, but  chivalry  spared  the  charwomen,  and 
Dickens  was  funny,  and  could  do  no  harm. 
His  fellow  worker  Wimpole  would  read 
things  like  "  Three  Men  in  a  Boat "  to  the 
poor;  but  Vernon-Smith  regarded  this  as  a 
sacrifice  of  principle,  or  (what  was  the  same 
thing  to  him)  of  dignity.  He  would  not 
encourage  them  in  their  vulgarity;  they  should 
have  nothing  from  him  that  was  not  literature. 
Still  Dickens  was  literature  after  all;  not 
270 


THE    MODERN    SCROOGE 

literature  of  a  high  order,  of  course,  not 
thoughtful  or  purposeful  literature,  but  litera- 
ture quite  fitted  for  charwomen  on  Christmas 
Eve. 

He  did  not,  however,  let  them  absorb  Dickens 
without  due  antidotes  of  warning  and  criticism. 
He  explained  that  Dickens  was  not  a  writer  of 
the  first  rank,  since  he  lacked  the  high  serious- 
ness of  Matthew  Arnold.  He  also  feared  that 
they  would  find  the  characters  of  Dickens  ter- 
ribly exaggerated.  But  they  did  not,  possibly 
because  they  were  meeting  them  every  day.  For 
among  the  poor  there  are  still  exaggerated  char- 
acters; they  do  not  go  to  the  Universities  to 
be  universified.  He  told  the  charwomen,  with 
progressive  brightness,  that  a  mad  wicked  old 
miser  like  Scrooge  would  be  really  quite  impos- 
sible now ;  but  as  each  of  the  charwomen  had  an 
uncle  or  a  grandfather  or  a  father-in-law  who 
was  exactly  like  Scrooge,  his  cheerfulness  was 
not  shared.  Indeed,  the  lecture  as  a  whole 
lacked  something  of  his  firm  and  elastic  touch, 
and  towards  the  end  he  found  himself  rambling, 
271 


THE   MODERN   SCROOGE 

and  in  a  sort  of  abstraction,  talking  to  them  as 
if  they  were  his  fellows.  He  caught  himself  say- 
ing quite  mystically  that  a  spiritual  plane  (by 
which  he  meant  his  plane)  always  looked  to  those 
on  the  sensual  or  Dickens  plane,  not  merely 
austere,  but  desolate.  He  said,  quoting  Bernard 
Shaw,  that  we  could  all  go  to  heaven  just  as  we 
can  all  go  to  a  classical  concert,  but  if  we  did 
it  would  bore  us.  Realising  that  he  was  taking 
his  flock  far  out  of  their  depth,  he  ended  some- 
what hurriedly,  and  was  soon  receiving  that  gen- 
erous applause  which  is  a  part  of  the  profound 
ceremonialism  of  the  working  classes.  As  he 
made  his  way  to  the  door  three  people  stopped 
him,  and  he  answered  them  heartily  enough,  but 
with  an  air  of  hurry  which  he  would  not  have 
dreamed  of  showing  to  people  of  his  own  class. 
One  was  a  little  school-mistress  who  told  him 
with  a  sort  of  feverish  meekness  that  she  was 
troubled  because  an  Ethical  Lecturer  had  said 
that  Dickens  was  not  really  Progressive:  but 
she  thought  he  was  Progressive;  and  surely  he 
was  Progressive.  Of  what  being  Progressive 
^72 


THE   MODERN   SCROOGE 

was  she  had  no  more  notion  than  a  whale.  The 
second  person  implored  him  for  a  subscription 
to  some  soup  kitchen  or  cheap  meal;  and  his 
refined  features  sharpened;  for  this,  like  litera- 
ture, was  a  matter  of  principle  with  him.  "  Quite 
the  wrong  method,"  he  said,  shaking  his  head 
and  pushing  past.  "  Nothing  any  good  but  the 
Boyg  system."  The  third  stranger,  who  was 
male,  caught  him  on  the  step  as  he  came  out  into 
the  snow  and  starlight;  and  asked  him  point 
blank  for  money.  It  was  a  part  of  Vernon- 
Smith's  principles  that  all  such  persons  are  pros- 
perous impostors ;  and  like  a  true  mystic  he  held 
to  his  principles  in  defiance  of  his  five  senses, 
which  told  him  that  the  night  was  freezing  and 
the  man  very  thin  and  weak.  "  If  you  come  to 
the  Settlement  between  four  and  five  on  Friday 
week,"  he  said,  "  inquiries  will  be  made."  The 
man  stepped  back  into  the  snow  with  a  not  un- 
graceful gesture  as  of  apology;  he  had  frosty 
silver  hair,  and  his  lean  face,  though  in  shadow, 
seemed  to  wear  something  like  a  smile.  As 
Vernon-Smith  stepped  briskly  into  the  street,  the 
273 


THE   MODERN    SCROOGE 

man  stooped  down  as  if  to  do  up  his  bootlace. 
He  was,  however,  guiltless  of  any  such  dandy- 
ism ;  and  as  the  young  philanthropist  stood  pull- 
ing on  his  gloves  with  some  particularity,  a 
heavy  snowball  was  suddenly  smashed  into  his 
face.  He  was  blind  for  a  black  instant;  then 
as  some  of  the  snow  fell,  saw  faintly,  as  in  a 
dim  mirror  of  ice  or  dreamy  crystal,  the  lean 
man  bowing  with  the  elegance  of  a  dancing 
master,  and  saying  amiably,  "  A  Christmas  box." 
When  he  had  quite  cleared  his  face  of  snow  the 
man  had  vanished. 

For  three  burning  minutes  Cyril  Vernon- 
Smith  was  nearer  to  the  people  and  more  their 
brother  than  he  had  been  in  his  whole  high- 
stepping  pedantic  existence;  for  if  he  did  not 
love  a  poor  man,  he  hated  one.  And  you  never 
really  regard  a  labourer  as  your  equal  until  you 
can  quarrel  with  him.  "  Dirty  cad !  "  he  mut- 
tered. "  Filthy  fool !  Mucking  with  snow  like 
a  beastly  baby!  When  will  they  be  civilised? 
Why,  the  very  state  of  the  street  is  a  disgrace 
and  a  temptation  to  such  tomfools.  Why  isn't 
274 


THE   MODERN    SCROOGE 

all  this  snow  cleared  away  and  the  street  made 
decent?" 

To  the  eye  of  efficiency,  there  was,  Indeed, 
something  to  complain  of  in  the  condition  of  the 
road.  Snow  was  banked  up  on  both  sides  in 
white  walls,  and  towards  the  other  and  darker 
end  of  the  street  even  rose  into  a  chaos  of  low 
colourless  hills.  By  the  time  he  reached  them 
he  was  nearly  knee  deep,  and  was  in  a  far  from 
philanthropic  frame  of  mind.  The  solitude  of 
the  little  streets  was  as  strange  as  their  white 
obstruction,  and  before  he  had  ploughed  his 
way  much  further  he  was  convinced  that  he  had 
taken  a  wrong  turning,  and  fallen  upon  some 
formless  suburb  unvisited  before.  There  was  no 
light  in  any  of  the  low,  dark  houses ;  no  light  in 
anything  but  the  blank  emphatic  snow.  He 
was  modem  and  morbid ;  hellish  isolation  hit  and 
held  him  suddenly ;  anything  human  would  have 
relieved  the  strain,  if  it  had  been  only  the  leap  of 
a  garotter.  Then  the  tender  human  touch  came 
indeed;  for  another  snowball  struck  him,  and 
made  a  star  on  his  back.  He  turned  with  fierce 
275 


THE   MODERN   SCROOGE 

joy,  and  ran  after  a  boy  escaping;  ran  with 
dizzy  and  violent  speed,  he  knew  not  for  how 
long.  He  wanted  the  boy;  he  did  not  know 
whether  he  loved  or  hated  him.  He  wanted 
humanity ;  he  did  not  know  whether  he  loved  or 
hated  it. 

As  he  ran  he  realised  that  the  landscape 
around  him  was  changing  in  shape  though  not 
in  colour.  The  houses  seemed  to  dwindle  and 
disappear  in  hills  of  snow  as  if  buried ;  the  snow 
seemed  to  rise  in  tattered  outlines  of  crag  and 
cliff  and  crest,  but  he  thought  nothing  of  all 
these  Impossibilities  until  the  boy  turned  to  bay. 
When  he  did  he  saw  the  child  was  queerly  beau- 
tiful, with  gold  red  hair,  and  a  face  as  serious  as 
complete  happiness.  And  when  he  spoke  to  the 
boy  his  own  question  surprised  him,  for  he  said 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  "  What  am  I  doing 
here  ?  "  And  the  little  boy,  with  very  grave 
eyes,  answered,  "  I  suppose  you  are  dead." 

He  had  (also  for  the  first  time)  a  doubt  of 
his  spiritual  destiny.  He  looked  round  on  a 
towering  landscape  of  frozen  peaks  and  plains, 
276 


THE   MODERN    SCROOGE 

and  said,  "Is  this  hell?"  And  as  the  child 
stared,  but  did  not  answer,  he  knew  it  was 
heaven. 

All  over  that  colossal  country,  white  as  the 
world  round  the  Pole,  little  boys  were  playing, 
rolling  each  other  down  dreadful  slopes,  crush- 
ing each  other  under  falling  cliffs ;  for  heaven  is 
a  place  where  one  can  fight  for  ever  without 
hurting.  Smith  suddenly  remembered  how 
happy  he  had  been  as  a  child,  rolling  about  on 
the  safe  sandhills  around  Conway. 

Right  above  Smith's  head,  higher  than  the 
cross  of  St.  Paul's,  but  curving  over  him  like 
the  hanging  blossom  of  a  harebell,  was  a 
cavernous  crag  of  snow.  A  hundred  feet  below 
him,  like  a  landscape  seen  from  a  balloon,  lay 
snowy  flats  as  white  and  as  far  away.  He  saw 
a  little  boy  stagger,  with  many  catastrophic 
slides,  to  that  toppling  peak ;  and  seizing  another 
little  boy  by  the  leg,  send  him  flying  away  down 
to  the  distant  silver  plains.  There  he  sank  and 
vanished  in  the  snow  as  if  in  the  sea ;  but  coming 
up  again  like  a  diver  rushed  madly  up  the  steep 
277 


THE   MODERN    SCROOGE 

once  more,  rolling  before  him  a  great  gathering 
snowball,  gigantic  at  last,  which  he  hurled  back 
at  the  mountain  crest,  and  brought  both  the  boy 
and  the  mountain  down  in  one  avalanche  to  the 
level  of  the  vale.  The  other  boy  also  sank  like 
a  stone,  and  also  rose  again  like  a  bird,  but 
Smith  had  no  leisure  to  concern  himself  with  this. 
For  the  collapse  of  that  celestial  crest  had  left 
him  standing  solitary  in  the  sky  on  a  peak  like 
a  church  spire. 

He  could  see  the  tiny  figures  of  the  boys  in  the 
valley  below,  and  he  knew  by  their  attitudes  that 
they  were  eagerly  telling  him  to  jump.  Then 
for  the  first  time  he  knew  the  nature  of  faith, 
as  he  had  just  known  the  fierce  nature  of  char- 
ity. Or  rather  for  the  second  time,  for  he  re- 
membered one  moment  when  he  had  known  faith 
before.  It  was  when  his  father  had  taught  him 
to  swim,  and  he  had  believed  he  could  float  on 
water  not  only  against  reason,  but  (what  is  so 
much  harder)  against  instinct.  Then  he  had 
trusted  water ;  now  he  must  trust  air. 

He  jumped.  He  went  through  air  and  then 
278 


THE   MODERN    SCROOGE 

through  snow  with  the  same  blinding  swiftness. 
But  as  he  buried  himself  in  solid  snow  like  a 
bullet  he  seemed  to  learn  a  million  things  and  to 
learn  them  all  too  fast.  He  knew  that  the 
whole  world  is  a  snowball,  and  that  all  the  stars 
are  snowballs.  He  knew  that  no  man  will  be  fit 
for  heaven  till  he  loves  solid  whiteness  as  a 
little  boy  loves  a  ball  of  snow. 

He  sank  and  sank  and  sank  .  .  .  and  then, 
as  usually  happens  in  such  cases,  woke  up,  with  a 
start — in  the  street.  True,  he  was  taken  up 
for  a  common  drunk,  but  (if  you  properly  ap- 
preciate his  conversion)  you  will  realise  that  he 
did  not  mind;  since  the  crime  of  drunkenness  is 
infinitely  less  than  that  of  spiritual  pride,  of 
which  he  had  really  been  guilty. 


279 


THE    HIGH    PLAINS 

By  high  plains  I  do  not  mean  table-lands ;  table- 
lands do  not  interest  one  very  much.  They 
seem  to  involve  the  bore  of  a  climb  without  the 
pleasure  of  a  peak.  Also  they  are  vaguely  as- 
sociated with  Asia  and  those  enormous  armies 
that  eat  up  everything  like  locusts,  as  did  the 
army  of  Xerxes;  with  emperors  from  nowhere 
spreading  their  battalions  everywhere;  with  the 
white  elephants  and  the  painted  horses,  the  dark 
engines  and  the  dreadful  mounted  bowmen  of 
the  moving  empires  of  the  East;  with  all  that 
evil  insolence  in  short  that  rolled  into  Europe 
in  the  youth  of  Nero,  and  after  having  been 
battered  about  and  abandoned  by  one  Christian 
nation  after  another,  turned  up  in  England  with 
Disraeli  and  was  christened  (or  rather  paganed) 
Imperialism. 

Also  (it  may  be  necessary  to  explain)  I  do 
not  mean  "  high  planes  "  such  as  th^  Theoso- 


THE   HIGH   PLAINS 

phists  and  the  Higher  Thought  Centres  talk 
about.  They  spell  theirs  differently ;  but  I  will 
not  have  theirs  in  any  spelling.  They,  I  know, 
are  always  expounding  how  this  or  that  person 
is  on  a  lower  plane,  while  they  (the  speakers)  are 
on  a  higher  plane:  sometimes  they  will  almost 
tell  you  what  plane,  as  "  599a  "  or  "  Plane  F, 
sub-plane  304.'^  I  do  not  mean  this  sort  of 
height  either.  My  religion  says  nothing  about 
such  planes  except  that  all  men  are  on  one  plane 
and  that  by  no  means  a  high  one.  There  are 
saints  indeed  in  my  religion:  but  a  saint 
only  means  a  man  who  really  knows  he  is  a 
sinner. 

Why  then  should  I  talk  of  the  plains  as  high.? 
I  do  it  for  a  rather  singular  reason,  which  I 
will  illustrate  by  a  parallel.  When  I  was  at 
school  learning  all  the  Greek  I  have  ever  for- 
gotten, I  was  puzzled  by  the  phrase  olvov  fxeXav, 
that  is  "  black  wine,"  which  continually  oc- 
curred. I  asked  what  it  meant,  and  many 
most  interesting  and  convincing  answers  were 
given.  It  was  pointed  out  that  we  know  little 
88X 


THE   HIGH   PLAINS 

of  the  actual  liquid  drunk  by  the  Greeks ;  that 
the  analogy  of  modem  Greek  wines  may  suggest 
that  it  was  dark  and  sticky,  perhaps  a  sort  of 
syrup  always  taken  with  water;  that  archaic 
language  about  colour  is  always  a  little  dubious, 
as  where  Homer  speaks  of  the  "  wine-dark  sea  " 
and  so  on.  I  was  very  properly  satisfied,  and 
never  thought  of  the  matter  again;  until  one 
day,  having  a  decanter  of  claret  in  front  of  me, 
I  happened  to  look  at  it.  I  then  perceived  that 
they  called  wine  black  because  it  is  black.  Very 
thin,  diluted,  or  held-up  abruptly  against  a 
flame,  red  wine  is  red ;  but  seen  in  body  in  most 
normal  shades  and  semi-lights  red  wine  is  black, 
and  therefore  was  called  so. 

On  the  same  principles  I  call  the  plains  high 
because  the  plains  always  are  high;  they  are 
always  as  high  as  we  are.  We  talk  of  climbing 
a  mountain  crest  and  looking  down  at  the  plain ; 
but  the  phrase  is  an  illusion  of  our  arrogance. 
It  is  impossible  even  to  look  down  at  the  plain. 
For  the  plain  itself  rises  as  we  rise.  It  is  not 
merely  true  that  the  higher  we  climb  the  wider 
282 


THE   HIGH   PLAINS 

and  wider  is  spread  out  below  us  the  wealth  of 
the  world;  it  is  not  merely  that  the  devil  or 
some  other  respectable  guide  for  tourists  takes 
us  to  the  top  of  an  exceeding  high  mountain 
and  shows  us  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth.  It 
is  more  than  that,  in  our  real  feeling  of  it.  It 
is  that  in  a  sense  the  whole  world  rises  with  us 
roaring,  and  accompanies  us  to  the  crest  like 
some  clanging  chorus  of  eagles.  The  plains 
rise  higher  and  higher  like  swift  grey  walls  piled 
up  against  invisible  invaders.  And  however 
high  a  peak  you  climb,  the  plain  is  still  as  high 
as  the  peak. 

The  mountain  tops  are  only  noble  because 
from  them  we  are  privileged  to  behold  the  plains. 
So  the  only  value  in  any  man  being  superior  is 
that  he  may  have  a  superior  admiration  for  the 
level  and  the  common.  If  there  is  any  profit  in 
a  place  craggy  and  precipitous  it  is  only  be- 
cause from  the  vale  it  is  not  easy  to  see  all  the 
beauty  of  the  vale ;  because  when  actually  in  the 
flats  one  cannot  see  their  sublime  and  satisfying 
flatness.  If  there  is  any  value  in  being  educated 
28S 


THE   HIGH   PLAINS 

or  eminent  (which  is  doubtful  enough)  it  is  only 
because  the  best  instructed  man  may  feel  most 
swiftly  and  certainly  the  splendour  of  the  ig- 
norant and  the  simple:  the  full  magnificence  of 
that  mighty  human  army  in  the  plains.  The 
general  goes  up  to  the  hill  to  look  at  his  soldiers, 
not  to  look  down  at  his  soldiers.  He  withdraws 
himself  not  because  his  regiment  is  too  small  to 
be  touched,  but  because  it  is  too  mighty  to  be 
seen.  The  chief  climbs  with  submission  and 
goes  higher  with  great  humility;  since  in  order 
to  take  a  bird's  eye  view  of  everything,  he  must 
become  small  and  distant  like  a  bird. 

The  most  marvellous  of  those  mystical  cava- 
liers who  wrote  intricate  and  exquisite  verse  in 
England  in  the  seventeenth  century,  I  mean 
Henry  Vaughan,  put  the  matter  in  one  line,  in- 
trinsically immortal  and  practically  forgotten — 

**  Oh  holy  hope  and  high  humility." 

That  adjective  "  high  "  is  not  only  one  of  the 

sudden  and  stunning  inspirations  of  literature; 

it  is  also  one  of  the  greatest  and  gravest  defini- 

284 


THE   HIGH  PLAINS 

tions  of  moral  science.  However  far  aloft  a 
man  may  go,  he  is  still  looking  up,  not  only  at 
God  (which  is  obvious),  but  in  a  manner  at  men 
also :  seeing  more  and  more  all  that  is  towering 
and  mysterious  in  the  dignity  and  destiny  of  the 
lonely  house  of  Adam.  I  wrote  some  part  of 
these  rambling  remarks  on  a  high  ridge  of  rock 
and  turf  overlooking  a  stretch  of  the  central 
counties;  the  rise  was  slight  enough  in  reality, 
but  the  immediate  ascent  had  been  so  steep  and 
sudden  that  one  could  not  avoid  the  fancy  that 
on  reaching  the  summit  one  would  look  down  at 
the  stars.  But  one  did  not  look  down  at  the 
stars,  but  rather  up  at  the  cities ;  seeing  as  high 
in  heaven  the  palace  town  of  Alfred  like  a  lit 
sunset  cloud,  and  away  in  the  void  spaces,  like 
a  planet  in  eclipse,  Salisbury.  So,  it  may  be 
hoped,  until  we  die  you  and  I  will  always  look  up 
rather  than  down  at  the  labours  and  the  hab- 
itations of  our  race ;  we  will  lift  up  our  eyes  to 
the  valleys  from  whence  cometh  our  help.  For 
from  every  special  eminence  and  beyond  every 
sublime  landmark,  it  is  good  for  our  souls 
286 


THE   HIGH   PLAINS 

to  see  only  vaster  and  vaster  visions  of 
that  dizzy  and  divine  level;  and  to  behold 
from  our  crumbling  turrets  the  tall  plains  of 
equality. 


g86 


THE    CHORUS 

One  of  the  most  marked  instances  of  the  decline 
of  true  popular  sympathy  is  the  gradual  disap- 
pearance in  our  time  of  the  habit  of  singing  in 
chorus.  Even  when  it  is  done  nowadays  it  is 
done  tentatively  and  sometimes  inaudibly;  ap- 
parently upon  some  preposterous  principle 
(which  I  have  never  clearly  grasped)  that  sing- 
ing is  an  art.  In  the  new  aristocracy  of  the 
drawing-room  a  lady  is  actually  asked  whether 
she  sings.  In  the  old  democracy  of  the  dinner 
table  a  man  was  simply  told  to  sing,  and  he  had 
to  do  it.  I  like  the  atmosphere  of  those  old 
banquets.  I  like  to  think  of  my  ancestors,  mid- 
dle-aged or  venerable  gentlemen,  all  sitting 
round  a  table  and  explaining  that  they  would 
never  forget  old  days  or  friends  with  a  rumpty- 
iddity-iddity,  or  letting  it  be  known  that  they 
would  die  for  England's  glory  with  their  tooral 
ooral,  etc.  Even  the  vices  of  that  society 
£87 


THE   CHORUS 

(which  sometimes,  I  fear,  rendered  the  narrative 
portions  of  the  song  almost  as  cryptic  and  in- 
articulate as  the  chorus)  were  displayed  with  a 
more  human  softening  than  the  same  vices  in  the 
saloon  bars  of  our  own  time.  I  greatly  prefer 
Mr.  Richard  Swiveller  to  Mr.  Stanley  Ortheris. 
I  prefer  the  man  who  exceeded  in  rosy  wine  in 
order  that  the  wing  of  friendship  might  never 
moult  a  feather  to  the  man  who  exceeds  quite  as 
much  in  whiskies  and  sodas,  but  declares  all  the 
time  that  he's  for  number  one,  and  that  you 
don't  catch  him  paying  for  other  men's  drinks. 
The  old  men  of  pleasure  (with  their  tooral 
ooral)  got  at  least  some  social  and  communal 
virtue  out  of  pleasure.  The  new  men  of 
pleasure  (without  the  slightest  vestige  of 
a  tooral  ooral)  are  simply  hermits  of  irre- 
ligion  instead  of  religion,  anchorites  of  athe- 
ism, and  they  might  as  well  be  drugging 
themselves  with  hashish  or  opium  in  a  wilder- 
ness. 

But  the  chorus  of  the  old  songs  had  another 
use  besides  this   obvious   one  of  asserting  the 
288 


THE   CHORUS 

popular  element  in  the  arts.  The  chorus  of  a 
song,  even  of  a  comic  song,  has  the  same  pur- 
pose as  the  chorus  in  a  Greek  tragedy.  It 
reconciles  men  to  the  gods.  It  connects  this 
one  particular  tale  with  the  cosmos  and  the 
philosophy  of  common  things.  Thus  we  con- 
stantly find  in  the  old  ballads,  especially  the 
pathetic  ballads,  some  refrain  about  the  grass 
growing  green,  or  the  birds  singing,  or  the 
woods  being  merry  in  spring.  These  are  win- 
dows opened  in  the  house  of  tragedy;  mo- 
mentary glimpses  of  larger  and  quieter  scenes, 
of  more  ancient  and  enduring  landscapes.  Many 
of  the  country  songs  describing  crime  and  death 
have  refrains  of  a  startling  joviality  like  cock 
crow,  just  as  if  the  whole  company  were  com- 
ing in  with  a  shout  of  protest  against  so  sombre 
a  view  of  existence.  There  is  a  long  and  grue- 
some ballad  called  "  The  Berkshire  Tragedy,'* 
about  a  murder  committed  by  a  jealous  sister, 
for  the  consummation  of  which  a  wicked  miller 
is  hanged,  and  the  chorus  (which  should  come 
in  a  kind  of  burst)  runs: 
289 


THE   CHORUS 

"  And  I'll  be  true  to  my  love 
If  my  love'U  be  true  to  me." 

The  very  reasonable  arrangement  here  sug- 
gested IS  introduced,  I  think,  as  a  kind  of  throw 
back  to  the  normal ;  a  reminder  that  even  "  The 
Berkshire  Tragedy  "  does  not  fill  the  whole  of 
Berkshire.  The  poor  young  lady  is  drowned, 
and  the  wicked  miller  (to  whom  we  may  have 
been  affectionately  attached)  is  hanged;  but 
still  a  ruby  kindles  in  the  vine,  and  many  a 
garden  by  the  water  blows.  Not  that  Omar's 
type  of  hedonistic  resignation  is  at  all  the  same 
as  the  breezy  impatience  of  the  Berkshire  re- 
frain ;  but  they  are  alike  in  so  far  as  they  gaze 
out  beyond  the  particular  complication  to  more 
open  plains  of  peace.  The  chorus  of  the  ballad 
looks  past  the  drowning  maiden  and  the  miller's 
gibbet,  and  sees  the  lanes  full  of  lovers. 

This  use  of  the  chorus  to  humanise  and  dilute 
a  dark  story  is  strongly  opposed  to  the  modem 
view  of  art.  Modem  art  has  to  be  what  is  called 
"  intense."  It  is  not  easy  to  define  being  in- 
tense; but,  roughly  speaking,  it  means  saying 
290 


THE    CHORUS 

only  one  thing  at  a  time,  and  saying  it  wrong. 
Modern  tragic  writers  have  to  write  short 
stories;  if  they  wrote  long  stories  (as  the  man 
said  of  philosophy)  cheerfulness  would  creep  in. 
Such  stories  are  like  stings;  brief,  but  purely 
painful.  And  doubtless  they  bore  some  re- 
semblance to  some  lives  lived  under  our  success- 
ful scientific  civilisation ;  lives  which  tend  in  any 
case  to  be  painful,  and  in  many  cases  to  be 
brief.  But  when  the  artistic  people  passed  be- 
yond the  poignant  anecdote  and  began  to  write 
long  books  full  of  poignancy,  then  the  reading 
public  began  to  rebel  and  to  demand  the  recall 
of  romance.  The  long  books  about  the  black 
poverty  of  cities  became  quite  insupportable. 
The  Berkshire  tragedy  had  a  chorus;  but  the 
London  tragedy  has  no  chorus.  Therefore  peo- 
ple welcomed  the  return  of  adventurous  novels 
about  alien  places  and  times,  the  trenchant  and 
swordlike  stories  of  Stevenson.  But  I  am  not 
narrowly  on  the  side  of  the  romantics.  I  think 
that  glimpses  of  the  gloom  of  our  civilisation 
ought  to  be  recorded.  I  think  that  the  be- 
291 


THE    CHORUS 

wilderments  of  the  solitary  and  sceptical  soul 
ought  to  be  preserved,  if  it  be  only  for  the  pity 
(yes,  and  the  admiration)  of  the  happier  time. 
But  I  wish  that  there  were  some  way  in  which 
the  chorus  could  enter.  I  wish  that  at  the  end 
of  each  chapter  of  stiff  agony  or  insane  terror 
the  choir  of  humanity  could  come  in  with  a 
crash  of  music  and  tell  both  the  reader  and  the 
author  that  this  is  not  the  whole  of  human  ex- 
perience. Let  them  go  on  recording  hard  scenes 
or  hideous  questions,  but  let  there  be  a  jolly  re- 
frain. 

Thus  we  might  read :  "  As  Honoria  laid  down 
the  volume  of  Ibsen  and  went  wearily  to  her 
window,  she  realised  that  life  must  be  to  her  not 
only  harsher,  but  colder  than  it  was  to  the  com- 
fortable and  the  weak.  With  her  tooral  ooral, 
etc. ; "  or,  again :  "  The  young  curate  smiled 
grimly  as  he  listened  to  his  great-grandmother's 
last  words.  He  knew  only  too  well  that  since 
Phogg's  discovery  of  the  hereditary  hairiness  of 
goats  religion  stood  on  a  very  different  basis 
from  that  which  it  had  occupied  in  his  child- 
898 


THE    CHORUS 

hood.  With  his  rumpty-iddity,  rumpty- 
iddity ;  "  and  so  on.  Or  we  might  read :  "  Uriel 
Maybloom  stared  gloomily  down  at  his  sandals, 
as  he  realised  for  the  first  time  how  senseless 
and  anti-social  are  all  ties  between  man  and 
woman ;  how  each  must  go  his  or  her  way  with- 
out any  attempt  to  arrest  the  head-long  separa- 
tion of  their  souls."  And  then  would  come  in 
one  deafening  chorus  of  everlasting  humanity 
"  But  I'll  be  true  to  my  love,  if  my  love'U  be  true 
to  me." 

In  the  records  of  the  first  majestic  and  yet 
fantastic  developments  of  the  foundation  of  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi  is  an  account  of  a  certain 
Blessed  Brother  Giles.  I  have  forgotten  most 
of  it,  but  I  remember  one  fact :  that  certain  stu- 
dents of  theology  came  to  ask  him  whether  he 
believed  in  free  will,  and,  if  so,  how  he  could 
reconcile  it  with  necessity.  On  hearing  the  ques- 
tion St.  Francis's  follower  reflected  a  little  while 
and  then  seized  a  fiddle  and  began  capering  and 
dancing  about  the  garden,  playing  a  wild  tune 
and  generally  expressing  a  violent  and  invig- 
298 


THE    CHORUS 

orating  indifFerence.  The  tune  is  not  recorded, 
but  it  is  the  eternal  chorus  of  mankind,  that 
modifies  all  the  arts  and  mocks  all  the  individu- 
alisms,  like  the  laughter  and  thunder  of  some 
distant  sea. 


294 


A    ROMANCE    OF    THE     MARSHES 

In  books  as  a  whole  marshes  are  described  as 
desolate  and  colourless,  great  fields  of  clay  or 
sedge,  vast  horizons  of  drab  or  grey.  But  this, 
like  many  other  literary  associations,  is  a  piece 
of  poetical  injustice.  Monotony  has  nothing  to 
do  with  a  place;  monotony,  either  in  its  sensa- 
tion or  its  infliction,  is  simply  the  quality  of  a 
person.  There  are  no  dreary  sights ;  there  are 
only  dreary  sightseers.  It  is  a  matter  of  taste, 
that  is  of  personality,  whether  marshes  are 
monotonous;  but  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  and 
science  that  they  are  not  monochrome.  The 
tops  of  high  mountains  (I  am  told)  are  all 
white ;  the  depths  of  primeval  caverns  (I  am  also 
told)  are  all  dark.  The  sea  will  be  grey  or  blue 
for  weeks  together;  and  the  desert,  I  have  been 
led  to  believe,  is  the  colour  of  sand.  The  North 
Pole  (if  we  found  it)  would  be  white  with  cracks 
of  blue;  and  Endless  Space  (if  we  went  there) 
would,  I  suppose,  be  black  with  white  spots.  If 
296 


A  ROMANCE  OP  THE  MARSHES 

any  of  these  were  counted  of  a  monotonous 
colour  I  could  well  understand  it;  but  on  the 
contrary,  they  are  always  spoken  of  as  if  they 
had  the  gorgeous  and  chaotic  colours  of  a  cos- 
mic kaleidoscope.  Now  exactly  where  you  can 
find  colours  like  those  of  a  tulip  garden  or  a 
stained-glass  window,  is  in  those  sunken  and 
sodden  lands  which  are  always  called  dreary. 
Of  course  the  great  tulip  gardens  did  arise  in 
Holland;  which  is  simply  one  immense  marsh. 
There  is  nothing  in  Europe  so  truly  tropical  as 
marshes.  Also,  now  I  come  to  think  of  it,  there 
are  few  places  so  agreeably  marshy  as  tropics. 
At  any  rate  swamp  and  fenlands  in  England  are 
always  especially  rich  in  gay  grasses  or  gorgeous 
fungoids;  and  seem  sometimes  as  glorious  as  a 
transformation  scene ;  but  also  as  unsubstantial. 
In  these  splendid  scenes  it  is  always  very  easy  to 
put  your  foot  through  the  scenery.  You  may 
sink  up  to  your  armpits ;  but  you  will  sink  up  to 
your  armpits  in  flowers.  I  do  not  deny  that  I 
myself  am  of  a  sort  that  sinks — except  in  the 
matter  of  spirits.  I  saw  in  the  west  counties 
296 


A  ROMANCE  OF  THE  MARSHES 

recently  a  swampy  field  of  great  richness  and 
promise.  If  I  had  stepped  on  it  I  have  no 
doubt  at  all  that  I  should  have  vanished;  that 
aeons  hence  the  complete  fossil  of  a  fat  Fleet 
Street  journalist  would  be  found  in  that  com- 
pressed clay.  I  only  claim  that  it  would  be 
found  in  some  attitude  of  energy,  or  even  of 
joy.  But  the  last  point  is  the  most  important 
of  all;  for  as  I  imagined  myself  sinking  up  to 
the  neck  in  what  looked  like  a  solid  green  field, 
I  suddenly  remembered  that  this  very  thing 
must  have  happened  to  certain  interesting 
pirates  quite  a  thousand  years  ago. 

For,  as  it  happened,  the  flat  fenland  in  which  I 
so  nearly  sunk  was  the  fenland  round  the  Island 
of  Athelney,  which  is  now  an  island  in  the  fields 
and  no  longer  in  the  waters.  But  on  the  abrupt 
hillock  a  stone  still  stands  to  say  that  this  was 
that  embattled  islet  in  the  Parrett  where  King 
Alfred  held  his  last  fort  against  the  foreign 
invaders,  in  that  war  that  nearly  washed  us  as 
far  from  civilisation  as  the  Solomon  Islands. 
Here  he  defended  the  island  called  Athelney  as 
297 


A  ROMANCE  OP  THE  MARSHES 

he  afterwards  did  his  best  to  defend  the  island 
called  England.  For  the  hero  always  defends 
an  island,  a  thing  beleagured  and  surrounded, 
like  the  Troy  of  Hector.  And  the  highest  and 
largest  humanitarian  can  only  rise  to  defending 
the  tiny  island  called  the  earth. 

One  approaches  the  island  of  Athelney  along 
a  low  long  road  like  an  interminable  white  string 
stretched  across  the  flats,  and  lined  with  those 
dwarfish  trees  that  are  elvish  in  their  very  dul- 
ness.  At  one  point  of  the  journey  (I  cannot 
conceive  why)  one  is  arrested  by  a  toll  gate  at 
which  one  has  to  pay  threepence.  Perhaps  it 
is  a  distorted  tradition  of  those  dark  ages. 
Perhaps  Alfred,  with  the  superior  science  of 
comparative  civilisation,  had  calculated  the 
economics  of  Denmark  down  to  a  halfpenny. 
Perhaps  a  Dane  sometimes  came  with  twopence, 
sometimes  even  with  twopence-halfpenny,  after 
the  sack  of  many  cities  even  with  twopence  three 
farthings ;  but  never  with  threepence.  Whether 
or  no  it  was  a  permanent  barrier  to  the  bar- 
barians it  was  only  a  temporary  barrier  to  me« 
298 


A  ROMANCE  OF  THE  MARSHES 

I  discovered  three  large  and  complete  coppers  in 
various  parts  of  my  person,  and  I  passed  on 
along  that  strangely  monotonous  and  strangely 
fascinating  path.  It  is  not  merely  fanciful  to 
feel  that  the  place  expresses  itself  appropriately 
as  the  place  where  the  great  Christian  King  hid 
himself  from  the  heathen.  Though  a  marshland 
is  always  open  it  is  still  curiously  secret.  Fens, 
like  deserts,  are  large  things  very  apt  to  be  mis- 
laid. These  flats  feared  to  be  overlooked  in  a 
double  sense;  the  small  trees  crouched  and  the 
whole  plain  seemed  lying  on  its  face,  as  men  do 
when  shells  burst.  The  little  path  ran  fearlessly 
forward;  but  it  seemed  to  run  on  all  fours. 
Everything  in  that  strange  countryside  seemed 
to  be  lying  low,  as  if  to  avoid  the  incessant  and 
rattling  rain  of  the  Danish  arrows.  There  were 
indeed  hills  of  no  inconsiderable  height  quite 
within  call ;  but  those  pools  and  flats  of  the  old 
Parrett  seemed  to  separate  themselves  like  a  cen- 
tral and  secret  sea;  and  in  the  midst  of  them 
stood  up  the  rock  of  Athelney  as  isolate  as  it 
was  to  Alfred.  And  all  across  this  recumbent 
299 


A  ROMANCE  OF  THE  MARSHES 

and  almost  crawling  country  there  ran  the  glory 
of  the  low  wet  lands ;  grass  lustrous  and  living 
like  the  plumage  of  some  universal  bird;  the 
flowers  as  gorgeous  as  bonfires  and  the  weeds 
more  beautiful  than  the  flowers.  One  stooped 
to  stroke  the  grass,  as  if  the  earth  were  all  one 
kind  beast  that  could  feel. 

Why  does  no  decent  person  write  an  historical 
novel  about  Alfred  and  his  fort  in  Athelney,  in 
the  marshes  of  the  Parrett?  Not  a  very  his- 
torical novel.  Not  about  his  Truth-telling 
(please)  or  his  founding  the  British  Empire,  or 
the  British  Navy,  or  the  Navy  League,  or 
whichever  it  was  he  founded.  Not  about  the 
Treaty  of  Wedmore  and  whether  it  ought  (as  an 
eminent  historian  says)  to  be  called  the  Pact  of 
Chippenham.  But  an  aboriginal  romance  for 
boys  about  the  bare,  bald,  beatific  fact  that  a 
great  hero  held  his  fort  in  an  island  in  a  river. 
An  island  is  fine  enough,  in  all  conscience  or 
piratic  unconscientiousness,  but  an  island  in  a 
river  sounds  like  the  beginning  of  the  greatest 
adventure  story  on  earth.  "  Robinson  Crusoe  " 
300 


A  ROMANCE  OF  THE  MARSHES 

IS  really  a  great  tale,  but  think  of  Robinson 
Crusoe's  feelings  if  he  could  have  actually  seen 
England  and  Spain  from  his  inaccessible  isle! 
"  Treasure  Island  "  is  a  spirt  of  genius :  but 
what  treasure  could  an  island  contain  to  com- 
pare with  Alfred?  And  then  consider  the 
further  elements  of  juvenile  romance  in  an 
island  that  was  more  of  an  island  than  it 
looked.  Athelney  was  masked  with  marshes; 
many  a  heavy  harnessed  Viking  may  have  started 
bounding  across  a  meadow  only  to  find  himself 
submerged  in  a  sea.  I  feel  the  full  fictitious 
splendour  spreading  round  me ;  I  see  glimpses  of 
a  great  romance  that  will  never  be  written.  I 
see  a  sudden  shaft  quivering  in  one  of  the  short 
trees.  I  see  a  red-haired  man  wading  madly 
among  the  tall  gold  flowers  of  the  marsh,  leaping 
onward  and  lurching  lower.  I  see  another  shaft 
stand  quivering  in  his  throat.  I  cannot  see  any 
more,  because,  as  I  have  delicately  suggested,  I 
am  a  heavy  man.  This  mysterious  marshland 
does  not  sustain  me,  and  I  sink  into  its  depths 
with  a  bubbling  groan. 

801 


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